The "Meaningful Game" award is given to a game that skilfully conveys its message through gameplay and aims to talk about social issues and the state of humanity and encourages people to ask important questions.
This is exactly the kind of game that students Jennifer Bell, Emil Judin, Kevin Bruno, Lars Gohde, Sebastian Dreschmann and Marius Maucher developed in their third semester project work. In FLOAT, the players explore an imaginative world of floating islands inhabited by mystical creatures, the Pookis. These creatures react to gestures and invite players to solve puzzles, create new islands and maintain the balance of their world. In the game, movement data is collected through intuitive gesture interaction. This is intended to support a start-up in the development of intelligent prostheses.
"We are delighted and incredibly grateful to have been invited to Warsaw. The competition was really strong and we are all the more pleased to be the only team from Germany to have successfully returned from Poland," said the students.
Virtual gestures, real effect: controlling the game
FLOAT is controlled via hand tracking on the Meta Quest 2, a virtual reality headset. Eleven primary human hand gestures - from the fist to the open hand - are intuitively integrated into the gameplay. Players wear a wristband that measures muscle impulses. The myoelectric data is analysed using AI and translated into usable movement patterns. The data is then anonymised and securely transmitted to the medtech start-up MyoMod, which uses it to develop smart prostheses. The aim is to use playful interaction to create an AI-supported data pool that facilitates or even automates the customisation of prostheses.
Myoelectric hand prostheses are state of the art, but are very expensive, costing up to 80,000 euros. The reason: expensive technology and lengthy individual training in specialised laboratories. As a result, more than 30 million people worldwide are dependent on mechanical prostheses, which are cheaper but significantly more limited in terms of functionality and suitability for everyday use.
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