BILLUND, Denmark – A ground-breaking interactive window that gives children the opportunity to star in a game as a LEGO®Minifigure will be unveiled at the LEGO Group’s brand retail store at Water Tower Place in Chicago, Illinois on Tuesday, November 15 at 2pm.
Children visiting the store window will be able to watch as they are magically changed into a LEGO Minifigure. The hungry LEGO Dragon Brickley then pops out from the side of the window and encourages the children to feed it with virtual apples lying on the ground.
The interactive shop window uses a motion-sensing camera to ‘see’ the child standing in front of the shop. This information is processed by specially developed software and a powerful Intel® CoreTM i7 processor to convert the child’s motions into a LEGO Minifigure that is then projected on to a thin film screen applied to the back of the window.
The child can then control the Minifigure’s actions by moving arms and legs in a similar way to motion-sensitive controls use in console games.
The window is a further development of the thinking behind the popular augmented reality Digital Box that is in all LEGO brand retail stores. The aim of the interactive window and the Digital Box is to bring the LEGO brand experience to life in a new, exciting and immersive way.
The Digital Box allows customers to see what is in selected LEGO sets using a camera and a screen. When the customer holds a set up to the Digital Box’s camera, a 3D animation of the contents is shown on the screen, superimposed on top of the set.
The installation in the Chicago store is a pilot that will be used to gather information about the interactive window. No decision has been taken about putting the window into other stores.
The window has been developed by LEGO Digital Business in collaboration with Danish production company GreatHouse and with hardware powered by the Intel® Core™ i7 processor.
