The Europe’s Lost Frontiers Augmented Reality Sandbox

As part of the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project, I wrote the software for an Augmented Reality sandbox. I first saw an AR sandbox at the British Geological Survey HQ in Keyworth, and subsequently looked up the details on Oliver Kreylos’ site. As part of the GG-TOP project at the University of Birmingham, we thought it would be a good addition to our stand at the 2015 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London. Despite the hardware (and software, for that matter) being thrown together on a bit of an ad hoc basis, people seemed very interested in it. They didn’t seem to mind the fact that the actual box was made out of two IKEA trays glued together or that the support for the projector was a B&Q stair rod.

When Europe’s Lost Frontiers came along, an AR sandbox was seen as a good way of being able to take part in public events with something more than some maps and photos of tubes of dirt. The first piece of software, ELF Dynamic System, was an attempt to create a very simple interconnected environment where climate, flora, fauna and humans all shared a box of play sand. We used this to introduce the themes of the simulation within ELF.

A second model was created, ELF Activity Traces, which allowed a demonstration of the types of archaeological investigation we could do under the sea, and what the differences were between them.

Now that the book chapter covering the sandbox has been published (part of this book), I’ll be making sure the software is documented properly on github. If you can’t get the Springer book, the sandbox chapter is available here.