Background

As the unveiling for a new concept in personal transportation brings new key components to the consumer market it also brings the challenge of communicating the benefits of progress through technology. These benefits span from personal safety to environmental protection and need to be displayed and explained in an easy to understand fashion that also is fun.

The installation

Four different puzzle stations, where the different concepts are split between the topics energy, technologie, quality of life and sustainability are explained, are set in a industrial environment. The puzzles challenge the user to deal with the topic and learn the fundamental ideas of the transportation product. By solving a station the user not only learns the facts, but is awarded with a code and can progress to the next station. Solving all four stations correctly leads to (...)
The four different stations where build six times each to scale for the event.

Technical Process

The complexity of these multi-stage puzzle determine the use of programmable and custom made hardware and software solutions. Since some of the stations have more than 70 interactable items a distributed logic was developed. This way the separate elements are isolated components and can be programmed for their specific solution. These communicated most of the time with a master controller which works as the “brain”.

This structure allows for faster configuration and easier replacement in case of a failure. Most of the switches, Faders, LEDs and other input or output components are wired with a standardized plug system configured to this installation. Custom made printed circuit boards, so called PCB’s, manage and route the different input or output signals to their respective ports. On the software side of this project, custom made libraries were used to implement the visions of the game designers and the complex puzzles were created by hidden technology to create an immersive experience for the users.