TVML Crouqet exhibition

TVML Crouqet exhibition The final demonstration of my work about TVML + Croquet had finished last weekend in NICT "Open House" exhibition. We had up to 900 guests including families of the NICT reserchers in the exhibition one day. It was a very exciting day even I was lack of sleep... My work was a kind of computer guidepost. There were six connected Croquet client in varied places like the cafe, gallery, or so, and users can ask the computer the directions for a bunch of display items. In the screen, the space is build as same as actual place, and there is a robotic character named "Chibi-Robo", who leads user to right place. There are a couple of differences than usual Croquet application, most different thing is users never walk in the Croquet space. For example, a Croquet client placed at the cafe is always shows the cafe. If a user moves the mouse, the viewpoint is just rotated, but not moved. If a user wants to follow walking "Chibi-Robo", the user must walk to next Croquet client in actual space. When the user reaches next Croquet, wow! "Chibi-Robo" would be waiting for you in the host. There are six Crouqet, but there is only one "Chibi-Robo" in the space, so children (there are a lot of children!) have to run in the floor to chase Chibi-Robo. Honestly, a number of children played with Chibi-Robo, and began to like Croquet. I thought this was a succesful demonstration. In the technical degree, there were a couple of challenges. Especially, TVML animation and connected 6 hosts are very difficult thing. Actually, I had to reboot each 10-15 minutes for memory leak (about one hour per a host). That was tough experiment for Croquet.