Design of a new trading card for table-top augmented reality game environment

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new type of trading card (called Stereo Cards) designed for a table-top Augmented Reality (AR) game environment. The main goal of Stereo Cards is to replace the current trading cards used in collectable card games such as Magic: The Gathering, YuGiOh, and Pokemon. The superior point of Stereo Cards is that they are computationally detectable and recognisable, e.g. they are numerically readable by computing devices equipped with conventional digital cameras or webcams. Therefore, Stereo Cards are not only suitable for collection purposes, but they are also ready for AR applications and games. In each card, we optically encode a unique error-correcting binary Golay code by pasting a series of stereo stripes over a portion of the original image. Even though some parts of the picture are lost, the Stereo Cards still maintain, on average, 75% of their original look. Further in this paper, we also describe a simple set-up of a table-top Stereo Cards game environment. From experiments conducted, our Stereo Cards are found to be relatively robust under various lighting conditions, and thus, could be useful in future trading card game tournaments.