Fortune Air: An Interactive Fortune Telling System Using Vortex Air Cannon

In Japan, people visit shrines in order to pray for good fortune. By determining our fortune, we draw fortune telling paper slips called Omikuji. Omikuji contains predictions ranging from daikichi (“great good luck”) to daikyo (“great bad luck”) As a novel interactive fortune telling system, we propose “Fortune Air”. By generating the adequate pattern of vortex rings with the smoke of the incense aroma according to a prayer’s interaction, visual, olfactory and tactile feedback is realized. As a first step of this interactive system, we implemented a prototype of fortune air. For generating the pattern of vortex air rings, we use two air cannons placed side by side. Vortex rings shot by each air cannon make various patterns of air such as merging or repelling. We define four patterns of vortex rings and adapt them as special meaning of couple matching fortune telling system. In this paper we performed two basic experiments to determine the parameters of controlling the pattern of double vortex rings. From the results, we confirmed that distance of air cannons and combination of value of air pressure will increase the probability to generate a designated pattern though it is difficult to control all of the patterns of vortex air rings under everyday environment. Finally we made a fortune air system to evaluate the performance.