RFID and Jigsaw Puzzle

Title of journal : The smart jigsaw puzzle assistant: Using RFID technology for building augmented real-world games

Author : Jürgen Bohn

Summary prepared by : Anis Farhana Mat Yusoh 13032

Have you ever facing problem in finishing the jigsaw puzzle game? Whether it is real or virtual game, it is sometime can make us feel annoying in order to match the puzzles. Sometimes, it takes almost hours to find one piece that is suitable in order to make up the jigsaw puzzle. For instance, imagine playing a large jigsaw puzzle with several thousand pieces, and then you get stuck, sifting for hours through the pile of remaining pieces that look all too similar, desperately trying to find a next matching piece. As of today, the ambitious player has no alternative but to back down and accept the unavoidable discomfort of manually trying out each of the remaining pieces until he or she finds the one which fits into the eyed spot of the jigsaw game.

But with the new discovery in applying the RFID in playing jigsaw puzzle can solve all the obstacles and hardships of enjoying the jigsaw puzzle game, whereas making it more fun and more enjoyable. The prototype of this game have been done by Jürgen Bohn, Distributed Systems Group from Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH Zurich, Switzerland called “The smart jigsaw puzzle assistant ( SJPA )”.

In this technology all the jigsaw puzzle have been tagged with miniature RFID tags,

Once there are all been tags, each piece will have their own ID. To make it function, user have to move the detector  called handy RFID reader that have been connected to the computer or laptop over the remaining jigsaw pieces until it detects another piece that can be added to the already combined pieces of the puzzle. SJPA can easily and unambiguously distinguish the various pieces of the puzzle. And once the relative position of each tagged jigsaw piece is determined with respect to the overall jigsaw puzzle, the SJPA is able to decide which pieces can be attached to a given jigsaw piece or to an already combined set thereof. Alternatively, the player can choose to pick a random jigsaw piece whose position in the overall puzzle game is then visualized by the SJPA and the update also will be displayed in the screen.

Another advance technology have been built by John that is more real to the user is by use RFID tags to represent certain functions same as functions have in the SJPA application. With this advancements it provide more friendly user interface to the user as it is more comfortable and intuitive than the currently available computer-based graphical user interfaces as using this way, it helps the user to concentrate themselves to play with the tangibles parts of the in order to reach the mouse or keyboard whenever he or she wants to select a special game function of the augmented puzzle game. In this way we can significantly increase the ease of use of the augmented game and keep low the annoyance level associated with frequent change-overs between the physical real-world game and the computer. The RFID-based interface also enables the user to actively interact with all parts of the physical real-world game – both with the physical jigsaw pieces and with the printed game instructions (the latter containing RFID-tags embedded in the papers which provide direct “physical” links to the special functions of the augmented game, for instance). Such RFID-based user interfaces can play an important role in bridging the gap between physical real-world games and virtual games, providing new means of user interaction and game control. Ultimately, they contribute to realizing the vision of “clicking in the real world”.

 Fully operational augmented jigsaw puzzle game has been developed and prototypically implemented using miniature RFID tags and a palm-sized RFID scanner.  RFID tags used are Hitachi μ-chip inlets, which consist of a tiny 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm μ-chip together with an external antenna of approx. 5 cm length obtained from Hitachi Ltd., Japan, as part of joint research collaboration between Hitachi Systems Development Laboratory (SDL), Japan, and the Distributed Systems Group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The Hitachi μ-chip operates at a frequency of 2.45 GHz and has a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique ID.

This unique application of RFID possibly done and can be set as a trend of playing jigsaw puzzle. For details, google here;http://scholar.google.com.my/scholarhl=en&q=japan+technology+of+rfid&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 

About the author : Jürgen Bohn received a master's degree in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany, inMarch 2000. In June 1999 he joined the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon, Switzerland, where he worked on his master's thesis in the field of mobile agent security. Since May 2000 he is a research assistant at the Distributed Systems Group in the Institute for Pervasive Computing at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.