Tangible/Intangible

WiFi/Bluetooth and the toy industry

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Interesting report (one of the drawback is that it's 2 years old) about the integration of WiFi and Bluetooth in the toy industry. I think it's a relevant issue since toys are more and more interactive.

There are many ways in which children can interact with toys beyond the tradition touch oriented play. Electronics in toys range from simple button activation to Infrared and Radio Frequency technologies. Traditional remote control cars using RF have been around for many years, but now Infrared is being used to transmit control information to toys. Clicker technology and RF tagging have also been used to detect elements in near proximity and enhance the play pattern with “smart” reactions. Toys have also been coupled to the personal computer, incorporating either clamp on keyboard devices, or direct input. (...) With both clicker and tagging technology, the child's play with the toy is enhanced through the sensing of other accessories.

The document describes some potential scenarios but...

Although it was predicted that bluetooth toys would be the hit for the 2001 Christmas season (Walker), the technology has been slow to catch on in other consumer markets, leading to prices that are still too high. With the current technologies used in sensing and interaction in the toy industry, the integration of bluetooth and WiFi into toys seems like the next logical step.

Why do I blog this? I am interested in knowing how the merge between toys and new kinds of technologies like wireless protocols might give birth to new applications.

Another rabbit-like technology: Lapinou

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Via akihabaranews, a new interesting rabbit-like technology made by Hitachi (presented at the CEATEC event in Tokyo):

"Lapinou, the robot rabbit! Hitachi presentes this small robot rabbit that can be connected a variety of PC products and home A/V equipment, and that can interact with human beings. It recognises the human speech and face, and it starts whatever you tell it to switch on, e.g. "Lapinou, record the football game on channel 4 at 5pm"... and there you go! (no, it's the white thing I'm talking about, and not the black being on the right)"

After Nabaztag this is a good step towards a trend in rabbit-like technology!

Toy Symphony by Tod Machover

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Tod Machover is a researcher at MIT medialab. He has a cool project called Toy Symphony:

With Toy Symphony, Tod Machover and his team at the MIT Media Lab strive to bridge the gap between professional musicians and children, as well as between audience and performers. This three year project, combining children, virtuosic performers like violinist Joshua Bell and conductor Kent Nagano, composers and symphony orchestras around the world, is intended to radically alter how children are introduced to music, serving to redefine the relationship between professional musicians and young people.

Through the use of innovative technologies to create musical instruments and compositional tools designed for an individual of any skill level, as well as weeklong workshops culminating in an integrated performance with children and professional musicians, Toy Symphony is designed as an utterly inclusive experience, one that will infuse the orchestra with youthful and enthusiastic collaborators, and the instruments, sounds, and ideas of the 21st century.

Why do I blog this? What is interesting is all the artifacts they designed like the hand-held percussive instruments called Beatbug on the left and this impressive Music Shapers, a soft squeezable instruments (on the right, wow I am a fan of squeezable interfaces):

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A digital parrot

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Good stuff by Crispin Jones: digiparrot, a cool project for the Japanese company Elekit.

The digiParrot responds to whistled tunes - it listens to the tune (it's eye flashes when it recognises a note) and replays the whistle in it's own particular way. You can view it in action in the movies below, if you are particularly interested you can see the development movies by clicking here.

Why do I blog this? I like this of toy/device since I stringly believe in the merge of video game and toy to create new entertainment platforms. This is of course really simple, but like the WiFi rabbit, I find discrete little toys like this nice. My favorite video there is the "Two digiParrot listens and replays 'You'll never wealk alone'. One digiParrot listens to the other whistle and replays that parrots whistle."

Printing turtle paths in a tangible 3D form

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Turtle path printer is a cool application for printing turtle paths in a tangible three-dimensional form. It's a project conducted at the Craft technology group (University of Colorado, Boulder).

"Turtle Path Printer" is an application in development. The basic idea behind the system is that users can steer a 3D turtle about the screen to create possibly complex paths; once those paths are complete, they may be printed out (on a 3D prototyping machine) in solid, tangible form. As early examples of the sorts of paths that can be printed out, the photographs here show a variety of knot forms (including a trefoil knot -- with three crossings -- and knots with four, six, and eight crossings), and forms based on the classical Moebius strip.

SCORPIODROME: Mixed Reality Social Gaming for Children

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SCORPIODROME : An exploration in Mixed Reality Social Gaming for Children (.pdf) by G. Metaxas, B. Metin, J. Schneider, G. Shapiro, W. Zhou and P. Markopoulos (User System Interaction Programme / Eindhoven University of Technology)

This paper describes the design of SCORPIODROME a mixed reality game for groups of 3-4 children aged 11-14. SCORPIODROME is designed for social gaming; i.e., computer gaming that is intended to support and trigger social interaction between players to occur within and around playing the game.

The SCORPIODROME is an action game played by 3 players who each control one Scorpio. Each Scorpio battles its opponents in an unconventional off-road race. Scorpios are remote-controlled toy vehicles augmented with surround-sound, graphics, and animation effects. In our game they were built by modifying remote controlled toy-cars (see figure 1). The Scorpios fight each other and interact with the physical and virtual elements of the game. The main goals for players is to drive their Scorpio as fast as possible over virtual checkpoints that are scattered on the physical landscape, to collect virtual diamonds scattered on the terrain and to make the life of other Scorpios difficult. Players are able to adjust the difficulty level of the game by altering the position and the number of physical obstacles on the platform terrain. The game mechanics of the SCORPIODROME are briefly described in the following sections.

Why do I blog this? it's a nice example of tangible computing in a copresent setting. The evaluation part of the paper is maybe too quick but it was just a poster. Interesting anyway. I think this is definitely part of a trend I see, which is the convergence of pervasive/tangible/video games and toys. This is really an intriguing phenomenon and there will be relevant research issues to investigate for that matter.

Sharing a sense of balance with people

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A curious way to feel copresence is described in Networked Equilibrium Sharing System "Balance Seat" by Nobuya Suzuki, Takahiro Kobayashi and Hiroshi Yasuda.

This paper presents a networked system connecting real space, which is shared and operated by three people. We made three pneumatic triple-axis motion platforms as a system to share a "sense of balance" with other people, and examined control methods for this system. Cylinders, which go up and down due to air pressure are used as actuators, and by moving the cylinders up and down while performing position control, the system can make the platform tilt

We considered whether it was possible to represent bodily sensations as symbols when shifting shared work performed in virtual space to real space. For our sensual symbol we chose the sense of balance, being a sense that is common to everyone. We constructed a system enabling users to share the sense of “balance”.

The authors chose to build this system to enable three people to communicate with each other.

Using Play-Doh as an interface to control digital media

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Brendan Dawes is doing amazingly intriguing things. Since I like melted stuff and weird forms plus I am doing research on human-computer interaction (with sometimes a focus on kids game controllers), how could I resist to a project that aims at using Play-Doh as an interface to control digital media?

Analog control of digital devices and media has always appealed to me. Like the controllers for a PS2, they allow degrees of fuzziness in a world made of very strict ones and zeroes. Life is not black and white, so for deeper interactive experiences we need to look at control devices that allow our analog thinking brains to influence and control this digital world. Play-Doh is a fantastic analog material. It’s the total opposite of the ones and zeroes paradigm. So I took the idea of exploring Play-Doh as a fuzzy interface, looking at various ways to use this tactial, fun “interface” and use it to control digital media. In this example the amount of Play-Doh on screen dictates how fast the film plays.

As I [Brendan] twist the Play-Doh and take bits away, the film reacts accordingly in real-time. Add too much Play-Doh and the film rapidly speeds up. An intimate connection is made between the user and the media. Every action has a reaction in the digital space. No scary buttons to press. No instructions to read. It’s just Play-Doh.

Why do I blog this? because I like this crazy interface!

Teddy-bear based Robotic User Interface

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This teddy-bear user interface reminds me the teddy-bear remote control I saw at Ivrea, it's both a "teddy-bear based Robotic User Interface" and a "Hand-Puppet based Robotic User Interface"...

The concept of using a robot as an interface between the real and information worlds can be referred to as a Robotic User Interface (RUI). Using the RUI system, a user operates the humanoid robot with same shape and physicality of a virtual avatar in the information world. This RUI and an avatar are always synchronized. Hence, by operating the RUI a user can input the motion of an avatar and obtain output information from the motion of the RUI.

Also, more explanations there:

We integrated the second RobotPHONE system with a voice communication system, and gave it the appearance of a teddy bear. By using the teddy bear-like robot as a shape-sharing device, we also intended to refine the essence of a communication device. When a user communicates with this system, the teddy bear acts as his/her physical avatar. Therefore it was very important to give the teddy bear-like robot similar shape and placement of degrees of freedom to a human being.

More about it in this paper: Noriyoshi SHIMIZU, Naoya KOIZUMI, Maki SUGIMOTO, Hideaki NII, Dairoku SEKIGUCHI, Masahiko INAMI, Teddy-bear based Robotic User Interface, Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology ACE 2005, pp., Jun. 2005. (a video here).

Tangible interactions to promote collaborative learning

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Ely the Explorer, Interactive Play System is a project carried out by the Umea Institute of Design:

In the search for more intuitive user-interfaces appropriate for young children, we have proposed a play system featuring a set of physical and virtual tools, which explores the qualities of different input and output modalities. The system provides a set of tangible tools that enable children to work together in the exploration and manipulation of content in order to achieve some joint outcome.

the play develops around the story of a group of characters named Elys. With a teleporter, Elys can travel the world, discovering other cultures. Elys send postcards and bring pictures, music and video clips to share with the children. 
The children’s play is to help Elys in documenting their journeys through e.g. words, images, drawings and sounds.

An Ely is both a soft toy and an onscreen character. On screen, Elys are agents that guide the children through the play. The soft toy is a transitional object between the child’s imaginary world and the technology, which may encourage fantasy play and creativity.Elys carry a backpack; a PDA featuring a small display to view content.  The teleporter is a multi-user unit featuring a tabletop touch screen, a set of tools, and compartments to host the tools. The screen provides individual working areas for the users as well as a common display area where the outcome of their collaboration is defined. An RFID* system identifies the tools and a LAN** allows transfer of information.

Up to three children can play at a time. At the beginning of a play session, the players introduce their dolls into the teleporter. The journeys of Ely trigger a variety of activities with which together, children explore other cultures while practicing individual skills such as reading, writing, and counting. Every player completes different tasks; the results are then combined by the group in order to achieve a common outcome.

Why do I blog this? because (1) I like both concepts and design of the objects (2) I think it's an interesting way to engage users in collaborative learning activities (3) the study of the artifacts and the activity provided in this report (.pdf) is amazingly smart and close to what I do with video game companies. A scenario is provided here.

The report is a masters thesis entitled Children’s interaction and collaboration while using a multi-user interactive play system (2003), Persson, A. (Masters Thesis in Cognitive Science).

Playware: playground for tangible interactions

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Playware is a cool project about tangible interactions for kids. It's carried out by Henrik Hautop Lund and Carsten Jessen (Maersk Institute, University of Southern Denmark and The Danish University of Education). The point of their project is to engage kids in physical activities instead of letting them in front of a (tv) screen through the embodiment of interaction in tangible material. Go check this technical report for more details. They designed an augmented play ground which rocks! the playground is actually meant to support various games:

We implemented different games on the tangible tiles and analysed children’s physical play on the tiles in continuous use for 2 months at a school in Denmark (Tingager Skolen, Denmark). In one of the games, colour race, children compete against each other (more children can play in groups) by first choosing a colour (either blue or red) and then in a hurry jump on the tiles so they turn into their colour. Another example is a tangible version of the computer game Pong where a red arrow moves around randomly and when it gets to one side of the tiles configuration, a child has to step on the tile quickly, to return the arrow to the opponent. The arrow can move to one of the connected neighbours. The wicked witch game is an extension, which uses PDAs and WiFi localization to provide story lines and guidance for the children’s play.

Our goal with the prototype was to investigate whether children would accept the tiles as play equipment and whether these very simple tangible games actually would initiate physical and social play. We observed children playing indoor and outdoor on the tangible tiles and on ordinary playgrounds to investigate play and games activities. Children’s interaction with the tangible tiles was continuously video recorded and analyzed over the 2 months period in the Danish school.

Why do I blog this? I am looking forward to know more about the results/description of what happened in terms of how children used this playground, accepted it and had fun.

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Day of the figurine, pervasive game

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I just discovered this Day of the Figurine thing, which is a new pervasive game project carried out by lots of relevant actors (Blast Theory, Frauhnofer Institute, the Mixed Reality Lab, Sony Net Service). It seems to be a part of the european iPerg project. Here is how it's describe in the IPerG News Letter, August 2005

To participate in Day of the Figurines, the player must first visit a physical place. Here, they find a large scale model of an imaginary town at table height. The model is 1:100 and extends for several metres in all directions. The image is a mix of computer graphics and photographic collage.

The town has identifiable buildings such as the YMCA, the Big Chef, Video Zone, the XXX Cinema and the Battle of Trafalgar Square. There are other features such as a Cemetery, a Gasometer, a canal, a Level Crossing and an Underpass.

To play the game the visitor selects from a display of one hundred plastic figurines. They give the figurine a name, answer a few questions about him or her and then watch as she or he is placed at a random location into the model town. As they leave the space the player is given a small map of the town and a set of rules for the game.

An hour or so later the player will receive their first text message from the game, asking where their figurine would like to go. By replying to the message with the name of a place in the town the player's figurine is set on the path towards that destination. Each hour a turn is executed and the invigilator moves each figure a small distance towards their destination. There are 10 turns a day for 24 days.

Intermittently each player receives text messages to alert them to nearby figurines in the model city, to their figurine's arrival at a destination or to other events in the town. Each destination has a short description. For example, if you arrive at the The One Club you receive the SMS: "Home of the 2 Fs. The lock ins are legendary, the fire escape stairs have seen it all." The goal of the game is "to help others". Texting messages to other players may provide opportunities to do this.

I like the low-tech aspects of the thing:

The project is deliberately targeting low-end phones: it is playable on any phone that is able to receive SMS. Instead the technological focus is on orchestration and management tools. During the long-term test period, 8 players have been given phones that log Cell ID and upload this information to a server. We aim to use this data to assess when players are engaged, when they are most likely to play and how the game fits into their daily activity pattern. We will also carry out phone interviews with selected players at key moments, to study the interaction between game play and daily life.

Airkanoid: Physical Proximity in Mixed Reality Entertainment Applications

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AirKanoid – Visual Presentation vs. Physical Proximity in Mixed Reality Entertainment Applications by Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath, Martin Faust, Hartmut Rosch.

A pervasive game like AirKanoid (see Figure 1) gets the game out of the computer and in direct contact with the players by combining the best of two worlds: Flexible and variable representation of the game from the virtual world, and unrestricted bodily movement and physical challenge for the players from the actual world. (...) AirKanoid is a MR remake of Taito's classic Arkanoid game1 (see Figure 3). Other games in this tradition are Atari's Breakout, and Pong. AirKanoid takes over the main game concept of bricks and paddles and adapts it to a more general and natural way of interaction. The main difference is the use of our graspable AirBats as interfaces for controlling the paddles.

Why do I blog this? the idea is funny, and the paper describes an interesting evaluation, relying on various indexes (performance, ease of play, awareness, experience, place).

Intimate interface: Using an EMG Controller for Mobile Devices

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Toward Subtle Intimate Interfaces for Mobile Devices Using an EMG Controller by Enrico Costanza, Samuel A. Inverso, Rebecca Allen.

Using a mobile device in a social context should not cause embarrassment and disruption to the immediate environment. Interaction with mobile and wearable devices needs to be subtle, discreet and unobtrusive. Therefore, we promote the idea of “intimate interfaces”: discrete interfaces that allow control of mobile devices through subtle gestures in order to gain social acceptance. To achieve this goal, we present an electromyogram (EMG) based wearable input device which recognizes isometric muscular activity: activity related to very subtle or no movement at all. In the online experiment reported, the EMG device, worn on an armband around the bicep, was able to reliably recognize a motionless gesture without calibration or training across users with different muscle volumes. Hence, EMG-based input devices can provide an effective solution for designing mobile interfaces that are subtle and intimate, and therefore socially acceptable.

Why do I blog this? It's interesting to see how a EMG based wearable input device can be used in a mobile context. Such kind of interface appears to be promising!

IEEE, sports and pervasive computing

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The last issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing journal is specially dedicated to the use of pervasive computing in sports, which is a highly relevant topic (giving the mobility and multi-players potentialities/settings).

Sensors and other ubiquitous computing technologies have slowly penetrated the arena of sports. This special issue gives some excellent examples of pervasive technology in sports and points to future directions.

Why do I blog this? the article about real time analysis of football might sound good: Computerized Real-Time Analysis of Football Games by Michael Beetz, Bernhard Kirchlechner and Martin Lames.

Real-time game analysis systems must be able to automatically recognize intentional activities in a multiagent system with continually acting agents. To meet these demands, the authors developed the Football Interaction and Process Model and a software system that can acquire, interpret, and analyze this model. The system can acquire models of player skills, infer action-selection criteria, and determine player and team strengths and weaknesses. They tested it on the RoboCup simulation league and received promising results.

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Tacticle graphics conference

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Via the excellent doors of perception, I ran across this interesting conference: Tactile Graphics

Tactile Graphics is an international conference on diagrams, maps and pictures which are touched rather than looked at. Topics for discussion include spatial cognition and tactile perception, tactile signage, tactile-audio diagrams. Principal users are for blind and partially sighted children and adults in education, work and life activities. Birmingham, UK, on 1-2 December 2005. Call for abstracts closes 8 August.

Why do I blog this? there might be results or techniques to transfer into tangible computing research. The past edition seemed interesting ( and ) and some material is available online.

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VisaVis

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Already blogged everywhere VisAVis games is a good way to move forward from the actual video game paradigm to new interfaces. It's carried out by Julian Bleecker and game designer Peter Brinson.

Vis-a-Vis represents a research vector along an old familiar trajectory of location-based designs, but adding a relatively new (for me) element of gaming. 
We've cobbled together a mobile gaming framework composed of light-weight, outdoor viewable TabletPCs, the Torque available source game engine, a global positioning system (GPS), a mil-spec 3D sensor that's able to very quickly and accurately measure where one points the TabletPC, turning the whole rig into a kind of "magic window" into the game world. 

While the technical framework might be considered unique, maybe even clever, it's really the games that have us hopped up. We're working through an exciting list of game concepts that are off the hook when it comes to what one may traditionally think of as an electronic game. We're hitting the canon of "traditional" outdoor kids games, making them fun, engaging, and hopefully a great reason to get outside and break a sweat. 

Vis-a-Vis Games takes ordinary electronic gaming off your old fashioned video game console and desktop PC and moves it out into the real world. This is the future of electronic gaming - pervasive, ubiquitous, in-the-world experiences. Imagine the heart-pumping action of your favorite FPS - in the real world! Or an old favorite playground game like Dodgeball, networked with other players both nearby and far away, where you actually have to move to dodge the ball! Or a role-playing game where you have to travel across town or across the country!) to pursue your characters goals!

Why do i blog this? I like the project very much. The 'VisAVis' framework is very appealing to me, it reminds me the "Behind the mirror" novel by Lewis Caroll with this idea of a "magic window". I envision lots of interesting scenarios both for pleasure/fun and educational purposes (even though it does not seem to be the focus of the project, it made me think about potential scenarios for children).

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A touchscreen made out of an elastic-like fabric

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P&V reader Adam Montandon (from HMC MediaLab) finished an interesting digital art project called "Hyperfabric" Hyperfabric. It's basically a very touchable touchscreen, made out of an elastic-like fabric, so the screen warps like rubber, and can sense how hard your press it, where you press it, and you can even have lots of people using it at once, you really feel like you are going "through" the screen.

Hyperfabric is a new interface that lets you reach beyond the screen. It’s a very “touchable” surface, made out of an elastic-like fabric called "Hyperfabric". The screen warps like rubber, and can sense how hard your press it, where you press it, and you can even have lots of people using it at once. You really feel like you are going "through" the screen. 

You can press, grab, twist, punch and play with the screen. It can even support your full bodyweight. The Hyperfabric screen is specially designed to communicate with a computer to generate interactive computer graphics, in realtime. 

What this means is we can create beautiful, magical scenes. You can see sparks fly out of your fingertips. You can cast magic spells from your hands. You can press your face into the hyperfabric to release fairies, or stir up ghosts in the dead of night.

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Computers in Entertainment new issue

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The last issue of ACM's Computers in Entertainment is finally released (a july issue released in august :) ). It has a very insightful section about pervasive gaming. Here are authors and titles:

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  • Pervasive games: bringing computer entertainment back to the real world by Carsten Magerkurth, Adrian David Cheok, Regan L. Mandryk, Trond Nilsen
  • The Drop: pragmatic problems in the design of a compelling, pervasive game by Ian Smith, Sunny Consolvo, Anthony LaMarca

  • Albert in Africa: online role-playing and lessons from improvisational theatre by Ken Newman
  • Sports over a distance by Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Stefan Agamanolis
  • Atomic actions -- molecular experience: theory of pervasive gaming by Bo Kampmann Walther

Why do I blog this? even though this is not an exhaustive review of what is going around in pervasive gaming, the section is very relevant. I found the first paper as the most interesting since it gives a pertinent overview of the field ranging from "smart toys, affective games, tabletop games, location-aware games, and augmented reality games". I really like Trond Nilsen's work (already explained here9 as well as what Adrian David Cheok does at his lab in Singapour.

Besides, there are also 2 papers I found interesting, the one by Nicolas Duchenaut I already blogged about as well as another one that concerns a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games by Penelope Sweetser, Peta Wyeth (which I found relevant for my work with video-game companies)

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