SwapBots - augmented reality at play
by Startacus Admin
The children's toys that burst to life with your smartphone or tablet through the magic of augmented reality... thanks to Liverpool based startup SwapBots
Although we have written before about how augmented reality can be used for educational purposes, it is also undeniably a great medium for play.
Taking advantage of this fact, SwapBots is a game played in augmented reality using physical, collectible toys. The toys come in the form of blocks, and bots are made up of 3 of these blocks, which are then scanned into the app using a mobile device’s camera. There are 9 bots to collect and 729 combinations to scan in, each creating a different animation in the AR app. With both single player and multiplayer game modes, children can play alone or together, their tabletop or floor transforming into any number of environments and battlegrounds in front of their eyes.
Liverpool-based SwapBots won support from the UK Games Fund, a government fund to identify the best new games; was awarded a place on the Northern Stars accelerator programme by the then Tech North; and is part of the Hax San Francisco hardware startup accelerator. They have been featured in the press extensively, being called ‘Absolutely captivating’ by the Guardian and ‘Spectacular’ by Creative England. Nice work.
SwapBots is on Kickstarter and has raised £25,617, surpassing their goal. They will soon begin shipping, and pledgers will hopefully be receiving their SwapBots in time for Christmas. Now the test will be for how long after Christmas children will be playing with their SwapBots!
If you like this AR startup, you might want to read up on:
3co - selling products through augmented reality
Virtuali-Tee brings the science of anatomy to life
Kodama - 3D creation and interaction made easy
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Published on: 9th December 2018
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