Groundbreaking AR technology turns any floor into an interactive playfield, transforming screentime into fun, active real/virtual world play.Winnipeg, Canada – March 26, 2015 — After three years of development, Lumo Play (www.lumoplay.com) launched a crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/lumo-interactive-projector) to build an entirely new class of toy. The company’s Lumo platform projects motion-aware games onto floors, getting kids moving with fun, colourful interactivity.
“We built Lumo to get kids moving,” said co-founder and CEO Meghan Athavale. “As a parent, I’ve seen first-hand how engaging games are — and how too much screen time makes kids sedentary. With Lumo, we’re bringing back healthy, fun playtime that gets kids moving and interacting.”
In 2010, Athavale and co-founder Curtis Wachs started building interactive installations worldwide. Shortly afterwards, they launched Po-motion, a software platform for these installations that’s currently deployed in over 4,000 locations worldwide. “Parents kept asking us if they could have these interactive apps in their houses,” said Wachs, “but the technology was too complex and the cost too high. We decided to spend the next three years fixing that.”
Since that time, the 6-person company has been self-funding the development of Lumo. In 2014, they entered the Highway 1 hardware accelerator to integrate the computer, projector, motion sensor, and other components into a turkey, affordable device. “We knew Lumo had to just work, right out of the box, at a price families could afford,” said Athavale. “The technology has finally caught up with our dream of bringing back playtime.”
Lumo’s core technology rethinks how movement detection works, and the company has eight patents pending in the field of mobile projection, motion detection, and augmented reality tagging. “There were a lot of hard problems to solve,” said Wachs, “some of those were hardware design and engineering, some were software, and some were about game design.”
The initial platform will ship with roughly a hundred games, customization tools, and a software development kit that will let thousands of third-party Android developers easily convert their existing games to Lumo’s motion-reactive controls. It also includes tools for children to customize games, adding their own artwork and design elements.
In addition to reacting to movement, Lumo will also be able to detect toys and make them part of the game, painting them with light and changing their appearance. The company has demonstrated this augmented reality tagging capability at events across North America including CES and SXSW, and will be offering it as a stretch goal as the Indiegogo campaign proceeds.
Lumo combines the entertainment value and educational aspects of childrens’ games with real-world movement and physical objects. The company is currently crowd-funding Lumo on Indiegogo, and it will be available for pre-sale shortly afterwards.
For more details or to set up an interview, please contact at: info@lumoplay.com
Distributed by GetMeCrowdfunded
Media Contact
Company Name: Lumo Interactive Projector
Contact Person: Meghan Athavale
Email: meg@po-mo.com
Phone: 204 666 7666
Country: Canada
Website: bit.ly/LumoGCF
