24 June 2004
VisPong tournament climaxes engineering summer school
Twenty-four senior school pupils from across Scotland anticipate an exciting climax to their
Engineering summer school at the University of Dundee on Saturday 25 June. They will compete in
'VisPong', the first-ever real-time vision-based ping-pong tournament.
This is a two-player computer game and all the action is controlled using players’ body movements
as captured using a webcam and interpreted by computer software developed by the pupils. Four teams
of pupils will battle their ‘VisPong’ designs against each other in a live tournament that will be
the final event of the 4-day summer school.
Dr Stephen McKenna of the computer vision group predicted, "A highly energetic contest, more fun
than Wimbledon and without the rain. I expect the teams will show just how versatile this contact-free
approach to PC gaming can be."
The computer vision group of the University’s Division of Applied Computing will show the pupils
the principles of image capture and interpretation by computer as part of the project. The school
pupils will then have only one more hour in the computing laboratory to devise their own algorithms
before using their body movement to play against the other teams in the live tournament.
Other technical events during the 4 days include civil and mechanical engineering projects and a
mobile robot construction and programming challenge. Pupils will also see modern computing and
engineering practices in action when then visit a number of Dundee companies including Denki, Avian,
NCR and W.L. Gore Associates, as well as the medical physics department at Ninewells Hospital.
University of Dundee hosts the Engineering summer school annually to give senior school pupils
experiences of engineering and physical sciences.
This conference is part of an ongoing series of annual graduate conferences to be held in Dundee.
For further information about VisPong, contact Gordon McAllister (Tel. 01382 344146,
email: gmcallis@computing.dundee.ac.uk)
For further information about the Summer School, contact Sandra Nicoll (Tel. 01382 34 8327,
email: s.nicoll@dundee.ac.uk)
By Angela Durcan, Press Officer 01382 344910, out of hours: 07968298585, a.durcan@dundee.ac.uk | 
