The happiest AI in the world
Exclusion from an increasingly digitized society is a major threat, especially to citizens whose basic digital skills are already less developed than those of many members of society.
We decided that we must ensure that everyone has the opportunity to learn necessary AI civic skills.
To alleviate fears and make learning fun, we decided to build an #AI escape room in a truck’s trailer.
Learning would be accomplished through solving AI-themed puzzles.
The prototype for the AI Truck was built by an international, multidisciplinary team as part of an Aalto Design Factory product development project course. The team consisted of Omnia vocational students and university students from Australia, Germany, India, Greece, Latvia and Finland. Their fields of expertise included, among others, coding, electronics, occupational therapy, business and psychology.
The prototype was further developed into a production version by Omnia vocational students and industry experts.
Riddle 1: Shape recognition
Once the players enter the escape room, they notice a lit screen and a mini-studio with a camera in the front in the back of the room.
The players’ task is to figure out that this task involves shape recognition, to find the shapes hidden in the bookshelf and to place them in front of the camera for the AI equipment to recognize them. Once all the needed items are recognized, a box sitting on a side table opens. Inside the box will be a key.
Riddle 2: Augmented reality
The key fits into a desk drawer. In the drawer, the players will find a mobile phone that has an AR application running. The application asks the players to fit a picture in a rectangular frame. The players need to figure out that the paintings on the wall are trigger pictures for the application.
The picture of Einstein reveals instructions, and other paintings reveal the code to unlock a codelock on the wall.
Riddle 3: Emotion recognition
Once the players insert the right code into the codelock, a screen at the office desk turns on. On the screen, players see themselves as well as five emotions in red. The players need to display all needed emotions in order to proceed in the game. Once they perform the right emotion in front of the web camera, the text turns to green.
Riddle 4: Speech recognition
When all the necessary emotions are detected by the AI equipment, the mirror above the office desk comes alive. A text appears that says “Ask Timmy to open the door.”
A microphone at the back of the mirror is attached to a computer. Once the speech recognition software detects the correct words, Timmy the robot turns its head towards a bookshelf where the players hear the sound of a door opening and the doors’ electric magnet lock opens. Once they figure out that the bookshelf is a secret door, they are able to enter a second room equipped with virtual reality (VR).
Riddle 5: Virtual Reality
The players put on VR-headsets and enter a virtual world. They get basic information on AI by watching short videos and then proceed in the game by answering questions on quizzes paced around the VR world.
To make it easy for people to approach the AI Truck, our staff consists of ordinary people accompanied occasionally by an expert from our partnering companies.
Omnia AI Lab: Heidi Rajamäki-Partanen and Timo Witikainen
email: firstname.lastname@omnia.fi