Report

Motivation

Interactive Cooking is a project created with the aim to educate aspiring chefs, by providing them with well-prepared recipes that will show them the step-by-step methods to follow and certain precautions that they have to take note of to cook a dish properly. It will guide users through the cooking process such as the selection of appropriate ingredients, the preparation process and the cooking method.

As not everybody has the means to access a fully equipped kitchen, Interactive Cooking helps by providing them with the necessary tools and ingredients of the dishes that they would like to learn can be readily available as all of them are virtually made. Furthermore, with the application, there is absolutely no need for clean up after cooking due to mess and no risk of fire as everything is in the virtual world! The software is designed to provide a simulation of actual cooking process to the users such that they will not encounter any problem even if they are made to do cooking in real life.

Our main inspiration for this project originates from Cooking Mama. It is a popular simulation-styled mini-game compilation video game, which had obtained an award in year 2006. Cooking Mama has been well-received by many and we believe that it will be useful to explore the different technologies available that can help improve the experience of the game.

Comparison with Existing Approaches

Cooking Mama started from a touch screen application and has moved on to using the Wii Remote to guide cooking activities. The difference between using Wii and touch screen is that user has better interaction with the program with Wii as they get a real feel of the mixing, frying and chopping motion. This is done by using gyroscope, which senses the absolute motion inputs.

However, even for Wii, user’s experience is in a total virtual environment. Also they have to align the virtual tools and ingredients with their hand motion, which will create difficulties for some people. Hence, we want to bring it to another level using augmented reality technologies. By integrating it with augmented reality, the virtual objects are being superimposed into the physical world on the same interface, which will allow user to have a pseudo feel of real cooking and thus enhancing user’s experience.

Structure of the Game

Novelties

For our application Interactive Cooking, we present the users with a complete set of work area for them to work with. This includes all the necessary tools that they require during cooking. For this section, we constructed the work area, which includes the chopping board and the grill, and uses real equipments such as the spatula and the knife. We then align the virtual tools with the real equipments so that the users will have a better visual effect.

Another novelty is that the users get to see their own hand motion during game play that is aligned with the tools and ingredients such that it looks as though they are really mixing, frying or chopping. This is done by placing the markers on the respective equipments. We then aligned the virtual tools generated by the markers with the handler of their respective tools.

Technical Challenges

One of the major problems encountered during this project is with the toolkit provided. The marker detection algorithm is very insensitive and that the speed at which it renders the virtual image is very low such that if the marker is moved too quickly, there will be a period with no virtual image rendered. This is resolved by adjusting our application such that the speed of the markers will not disrupt the flow of the game.

Another problem is that some of the markers cannot be recognized distinctively, hence causing overlapping of virtual images on the same marker or the wrong virtual image rendering on the wrong marker.

Thirdly, the system is not able to play the sounds required consistently. The behavior is very random such that it plays 85% of the time but not for the rest.

Another limitation that we faced was that the camera was not able to detect many markers together. The camera was able to detect optimally 2 and at most 3 markers at a time.

Lastly, it was extremely difficult for us to find free 3d food objects online. Most 3d food objects were available on purchase. Hence, we had to use replacements for our food objects.

Screenshots

Figure 1: Cutting Scene