BoXR

In the mixed reality project "Changing Rituals", the BoXR concept was developed within the given time frame of three weeks. I developed it together with my fellow student Niklas Kreutzberg. We started by looking together for rituals that relate to cultural encounters and everyday life. Between food culture, greetings, initiations and individual rituals, we decided in favour of sport, especially boxing.

The motivation lies in developing a concept in retrospect of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting implications for the individual. Everyone has had to live with restrictions on social contact during coronavirus. These took place in many different areas of everyday life. This is where we come in and build a bridge between augmentation, socialising and sport. The BoXR concept offers a glimpse into the near future of digitally supported sport. Our solution is a combination of augmented reality and a physical environment.

BoXR is about creating motivation for athletes and discussing a transformation of the sport through new technology. Users can carry out their boxing training in physical reality. All they need is their normal sportswear and the wall-mounted punch pad. The action is enhanced and digitally and socially networked by augmentation from a pair of AR glasses to be worn. These support a variety of functions. Firstly, the main feature of our concept is the gamification of training in that the user can compete against other networked users. If you want to compete together or against a friend, you can arrange to meet up online for this ritual (boxing training). You start training individually by being shown the 4 basic boxing punches as a tutorial. The camera system of the AR glasses can be used as a pragmatic analysis tool to correct movements. Furthermore, a user can compete against another user in a match by augmenting a sequence of punches in real time on the pad, which the user should execute as quickly as possible. As in normal boxing, points are collected which serve as a score.

As a user, I not only get a comparison with other competitors, but also an analysis of my own sporting performance over time. In this way, BoXR training can provide a challenge that not only physically challenges, technically supports and corrects an athlete, but also motivates them.

The basic punching techniques in boxing: jab, cross, hook and uppercut can be seen in the gallery below - these are linked to the possibilities of creatively integrating the extended level - the augmented world - into boxing training.