Students in the University of Iowa College of Engineering, the Iowa 3D Club, and Prof. Tyler Bell’s Holo Reality Lab have partnered with the Science Center of Iowa (SCI) in Des Moines, Iowa to collaborate on an outreach project: a Large-Scale Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox. Made popular by researchers at UC Davis, AR sandboxes allow for hands-on experimentation and play in sand while interactive 3D visualizations, projected on top of the sand, make the sandbox come to life with teaching illustrations such as elevation maps and water simulations. In this outreach project, Iowa students have helped develop and implement the hardware and software necessary to bring a custom-built, large-scale AR sandbox to the “What on Earth?” room for permanent exhibit at SCI.

We are very thankful for the opportunity to work with and contribute to SCI! We’d especially like to thank Justin Rule and Allison Schwanebeck at SCI and Cody Wilson of the Iowa 3D Club for being awesome to work and collaborate with on this project. Below are several photos of the sandbox’s launch at SCI on October 11, 2019 (click/tap a photo to see it full-size). Even further down are more photos this project’s design/development process. Enjoy!

The Process

In our collaboration, we aimed to re-purpose an old river bed, that had sprung a leak, into a large scale AR sandbox. We started our planning with simple measurements and a 3D scan so that we could remotely design our structure (click/tap a photo to see it full-size).

Students testing the original AR sandbox setup (single 3D camera, single projector).

Original AR sandbox prototype at the Science Center of Iowa.

Designing the customized structure of our large-scale augmented reality sandbox. The original 3D scan taken on our first visit to SCI helped the students digitally design and model how this structure would look once it was installed at SCI.