OLEM Project
We designed for LudoTech the parts of their first prototype of OLEM, an innovative board game console.
An interesting project for MECAGINE, because it mixed mechatronic issues with the constraints of consumer electronics products, the final objective of LudoTech being to produce OLEM in high volumes.
About LudoTech and OLEM
LudoTech is one of the start-ups of ADVANS Lab, the incubation and support structure of ADVANS Group. Its mission is to offer a new way of playing board games.
Its OLEM robot, which embeds a set of technologies, aims to offer players all the advantages of digital technologies while keeping the essential notions of sharing and conviviality. It can move and interact with its surroundings, offering new gameplay mechanics. It recognizes and reacts to contact with cards, pawns, table edges, and even to the detection of hand gestures. It allows playing innovative board games.
The MECAGINE intervention
Nathan Vignon, the technical manager of MECAGINE, presents the framework of the intervention:
“LudoTech provided us with the product design they defined as well as all of the associated features. We then worked on the design of the parts with a view to high volume production: they had to be assembled easily while being inexpensive to produce”.
Nathan tells us that the complexity of the project came mainly from the compactness of the system:
“We had to integrate four electronic boards, three holonomic wheels, three motors, a set of sensors, speakers, a battery, and finally an OLED screen placed on the upper face and allowing navigation in the product menu. The study of the assembly was thus one of the key parts of the project.” A small video accessible on the LudoTech Facebook page gives a more precise idea of the steps to be carried out.
The production
At the beginning of December 2020, LudoTech received twenty beta versions of OLEM.
“This is a milestone for us,” said Alexis Lemey, one of the three founders of the start-up. It is the result of two years of work, thinking, design, and collaboration.”
The next step will now be to lend the products to beta testers so that they can discover the console and its games, and provide user feedback. MECAGINE will intervene again to help the team finalize its product which will be proposed in preview as part of a Kickstarter in 2021.
The LudoTech Satisfaction
For Nicolas Silvani, co-founder of LudoTech: “The MECAGINE team has shown great rigor and ingenuity in the design of OLEM. Indeed, the challenge was high to succeed in fitting all the physical elements of the robot in such a small volume, while having a complete assembly achievable simply and quickly. Working with them was a pleasure.”