Vuforia fuels The LEGO Group’s unique reveal of the new Batman Tumbler vehicle

“I’ve gotta get me one of those.” 

That’s all Commissioner Gordon could utter when he first saw the Tumbler in action in Batman Begins, the first of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” movie trilogy. Legions of superhero fans and car buffs secretly (or maybe not so secretly) thought the same thing. Now, thanks to the brick geniuses at The LEGO Group, we can all build our own LEGO Batman Tumbler.

If you were lucky enough to score tickets to this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego—the world’s biggest gathering for pop culture and entertainment—you might have caught the jaw-dropping reveal of The LEGO Group’s highly anticipated release of a building-set version of Batman’s Tumbler.

The LEGO Group built up demand for the big unveiling by first obscuring the Caped Crusader’s car in a fogged-out glass display case. With a huge and enthusiastic Comic-Con crowd there for the unveiling, the Tumbler looked absolutely menacing (in a good way), measuring 15-inches tall and 9-inches wide, including 1869 pieces, and featuring an armored exterior, adjustable wings, a detailed interior and oversized rubber-tread tires—all compiled of LEGO bricks and elements.

The LEGO Group then revealed a first-of-its kind app, powered by the Qualcomm® Vuforia™ mobile vision platform, to give eager fans and members of the press an up-close and personal view of the brand new building set. With the app, available exclusively at the event, Comic-Con attendees could use an iPad to inspect the model using augmented reality. They accomplished this by:

• Pointing the tablet’s camera at the LEGO Tumbler model to activate the experience.
• Aiming at two different areas of the car to gain a brick-by-brick view of the detailed interior and adjustable wings.

The app took advantage of Toy Recognition, an upcoming feature of the Vuforia platform that enables the detection and tracking of three-dimensional toys, such as vehicles and action figures. This provides a seamless way to add digital experiences to a toy. Leveraging this capability, digital mini-figures in the form of Batman and Joker from The Dark Knight sprang onto the screen and engaged in a spirited fight sequence around the Tumbler—luckily, they didn’t scratch the car!

We are impressed with what The LEGO Group is doing to take new product reveals to a whole new level. As a result, we predict a strong interest from LEGO fans when the LEGO Batman Tumbler launches in September at LEGO stores and on shop.LEGO.com for $199.99.

Learn more about Qualcomm Vuforia here.