ETC Fall 2026 Projects

The Fall 2026 projects at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) demonstrate how our students and faculty are exploring new approaches to play, new kinds of immersive experiences, and new ways of integrating technology into education. This semester’s teams are experimenting with artificial intelligence, robotics, interactive sound, augmented reality, large-scale displays, and new connections between physical and digital play.

Below is an overview of this semester’s projects:

Exploring how we play

SpellChemists

Advisors: Ruth Comley, Vivian Shen
Team: Chufan Chen, Erin Hao, Freida (Jingyan) Hong, Haru (Zixu) Zhu, Kelin Zhu

SpellChemists is creating a two-player, turn-based strategy game that transforms a touchscreen and physical props into a living magical battlefield. Players become alchemist-summoners and assemble a Homunculus from elemental parts before entering the arena. Those choices shape the spells and abilities available in battle, making every creation the foundation for a different strategy.

Birdie’s Chirp

Advisors: Vivian Shen, Scott Stevens
Team: Riya Kanani, Sapphire Ruan, Jiakun Wu, Adeline Wu, Barry Yuan

Birdie’s Chirp is a series of asymmetric cooperative party games in which players in one room work with a Tilt Five player in another, sharing information to solve challenges. Synced Orbbec 3D cameras reflect the room players’ movements in the Tilt Five player’s virtual bird’s-eye view, creating different perspectives on the same magical forest space and encouraging communication and cooperation.

What Does This Sound Like?

Advisors: Dave Culyba, Heather Kelley
Team: Rob Huang, Jerry Wang, Zelin Chen, Jenny Wu, Yilin Shi, Liam Neely, Steve Wang

What Does This Sound Like? is an interactive game where everyday objects become instruments for storytelling. Players take on the role of Mr. B. Foley, explore playful environments, record unexpected sounds, and sync them to short films using a built-in editor. Designed for teens, the game makes Foley and sound design creative, hands-on, and fun.

Beyond TCG

Advisor: Jonathan Walton
Team: Ayman-Yereem Kone, Jiaxiang (Alvin) Li, Chu-Hsiang (Frank) Lin, Oscar Mailman, Austin Szema, Max Zhou

Beyond TCG is an experimental card game that brings physical cards onto a digital screen. Conductive glyphs allow the Board console to recognize cards, render them digitally, track gameplay, and create visual effects that bring the trading card game fantasy to life. The project explores the technical, production, and design challenges involved in creating a new medium for interactive entertainment.

A(i)dol

Advisor: Derek Ham
Team: Cheryl Wang, Yuelin Liu, Field Luo, Peter Cheng, Tao Jin, Lee Li

A(i)dol is a first-person K-pop idol growth game where players shape their voice, appearance and debut video through their choices. As players progress, their decisions influence the identity and image of the performer they ultimately become. By bringing character customization, voice generation and video creation together, the game explores how AI can be a means of self-expression.

Exploring immersive experiences

Beyond Frame

Advisors: Mike Christel, Shirley Saldamarco
Team: Na Chen, Esther Jeon, Minjung Park, David Song, Yuntao Wang

Beyond Frame is building an immersive interactive experience that transforms traditional landscape paintings into spatial, multisensory environments. Through projection, spatial sound, lighting, and audience presence, the project allows visitors to become part of a painting through camera-based body detection and image processing techniques.

360 Studio

Advisors: Derek Ham, Tom Corbett
Team: Aiden Xu, Andy Pang, Eve Ren, Jerry Zhang, Oulan Li, Tony Liu

360 Studio is exploring how a 360-degree cylindrical display can support new forms of location-based multiplayer entertainment. Through rapid prototyping and playtesting, the team is investigating how a continuous screen changes what players see, how they move, and how they interact in a shared physical space. The goal is to develop a refined cooperative or competitive experience while identifying practical design insights for future creators.

Innerverse

Advisors: Heather Kelley, Ricardo Washington
Team: Aya Al Sabahi, Aiden (Le) He, Christina (Hang) Yin, Ethan Wills, Gamma (Shijia) Zheng, Nightray (Te) Zhou

Innerverse is creating a multiplayer immersive experience designed for the ETC’s CAVERN, a customized CAVE with a 270-degree curved projection screen, motion sensors, and stereoscopic 3D. Computer vision cameras and Vive trackers will allow players’ positions and movements to influence a doodle world created by a student overwhelmed by deadlines and expectations. Through playful interaction, calming audiovisual design, and emotionally grounded storytelling, the experience invites guests to pause, reframe, reconnect, and return.

Top T.I.E.R.

Advisors: Shirley Saldamarco, Vivian Shen
Team: Aidan Terry, Sudarshan Choudhari, Ben Morris, Linda Wang, Cayla Kennedy, Autumn Chan

Top T.I.E.R. (Themed Interactive Entertainment Robotics) is developing an Old West experience centered on a humanoid robot character who guests will compete against in an audition to join a group of outlaws. The team is combining narrative and experience design, environment building, performance, costuming, lighting, sound, and robotics to make the robot an active character within an immersive fictional world.

Exploring learning and reflection

STAiGE

Advisor: Mo Mahler
Team: Yunqi (Vivian) Chen, Xingzhao (Agnes) Zhang, Angie He, Ailun (Ellen) Zhou, Paulo Tassi

STAiGE is an AI-powered platform that builds on already existing pedagogical methods to help teachers turn lesson content into interactive theatrical learning experiences. By combining process drama with AI-assisted content generation, STAiGE allows students to learn through roles, actions, collaboration, and reflection while helping teachers develop classroom-ready activities more easily.

I'mPossible

Advisors: Charles Johnson, Drew Davidson
Team: Jung Hwan (Felix) Choi, Nanqing (Ivy) Hu, Kexiang (KX) Shuai, Zhimiao (Sun) Sun, Helin (Henry) Wang

I’mPossible is creating an interactive narrative game set in the everyday world of a mail carrier. As his routines and relationships begin to shift, players are invited to pay closer attention, listen to others, and reconsider what deserves their time. Rather than prescribing what players should value, the game asks them to reflect on what matters, how they might use their abilities to make a difference, and what they may be waiting for.