Cell Phone Sonar Proposal

The concept behind Cell Phone Sonar was to create a big-scale outdoors game that exists in both in a virtual space and real space. In the game, players would navigate the gaming space by getting feedback from their cellphones. So if a player needed to work through a maze or find a node location, the cell phone would be able to give them some direction.

This project would focus entirely on getting the cell phone to work as a feedback device for navigating a game space. This could work off of GPS location, tower location, or both. How the player interacts with the phone to find a location would be limited to the best possible technological solution, but it should be clear enough for the player to find their way.

Known Issues: There is several major problems that have emerged in the research to make this project. First, not every cell phone has GPS available. Tower location is dependent on the cell phone's service. The biggest problem is getting a universal application made for multiple cell phone types that will check location. Though it would be possible to map a pre-selected area using Mike Edward's Sydewynder, there would need to be an application installed to every player's phone that would check for location. This could be player-initiated or check on an interval, but since there is no universal coding language for cell phones, and each model needs a re-coded application, this project seems dead in the water.

It may be possible to build a Sydewynder version of Cell Phone Sonar through one of the school's Nokia phones, but this would be limited to one phone and wouldn't be applicable to a big-scale game.