Universal has filed a couple of new patent applications for interactive theme park attractions.
If you want to dive into all the technical details, you can find the patent applications here: Vehicle guidance via infrared projection and Systems and methods for storing player state caches locally on ride vehicles.
The first provides a system for guiding trackless dark ride vehicles. Instead of using a embedded guide wire or a local positioning system, Universal's proposed system uses light projections. It's the same concept as a traffic signal, but potentially with projected characters or graphics dictating how your vehicles will move along one of several potential paths.
In one embodiment, a passenger in the vehicle could provide some input that would change the projections up ahead, effectively allowing the passenger not just to steer their vehicle but also to change the environment that determines how other vehicles are moving within the ride.
The other application details a system by which an interactive attraction stores its gameplay information locally, on the ride vehicle, then synchronizes this with a off-ride system. Potentially, this could allow for faster and more complex gameplay, as well as supporting global leaderboards and records that guests could access later, from anywhere.
In other words, there seems to be a lot of Universal's Mario Kart ride in here.
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