Pac-Man comes to life

BOULDER - Some students from the University of Colorado's engineering department decided to use their skills to recreate a classic arcade game.

"This is more than just a class," Cory Dixon said as he stood inside one of his labs.

It's also a place for students like Dixon to build unmanned aircraft.

"They fly with their own systems," Dixon explained.

The engineering behind the planes is pretty complex, but simple enough to mimic in a game.

"It's an old classic game," Dixon said.

For the last three weeks, Dixon and his friends have used their time to recreate a life-size Pac-Man game.

"The Pac-Man was controlled with our laptop and joystick," Dixon said.

They rigged a few iRobot vacuum cleaners and slapped on some Pac-Man prints to create the memorable characters.

"We've seen these little robots have Pac-Man style templates on them and we decided to make a real game out of it," Dixon said.

Instead of looking at a monitor, the students look down on the lab floor.

"We have this large grid floor," Dixon said.

The Pac-Man character is the only one being controlled. The rest are on auto pilot.

To find out more about the creation, visit http://pacman.elstonj.com/.