Combining playware exergaming with a mobile fitness app

Abstract: We propose a novel playware as a merge between exergames and mobile fitness apps to engage the users in physical exercises, not only as competitive play, but also in the form of cooperative play. The concept connects modular interactive tiles with radio communication to Android tablets and smart phones, which can connect to the Internet. This allows the players to monitor their playware exergaming performance on the smart device(s). A test was set up over 8 days allowing two school classes to compete with each other on which class was going to collect the most points playing on the modular tiles during the test. The test subjects were from 6th and 7th grade (12-13 years old children). As a social playware, we investigated how the playware mediated cooperative and competitive play amongst the users. It was found that the majority of game play involved social interaction between players, and that 8 out of 10 pupils on the top-10 were girls. The playware seemed to motivate the girls to become physically active

Co-located Augmented Play-spaces:Past, Present, and Perspectives

In recent years, many different studies regarding Co-located Augmented Play-spaces (CAPs) have been published in a wide variety of conferences and journals. We present an overview. The work presented in these papers includes end user's perspectives as well as researcher's perspective. We place these within four aspects in this review: 1) Argumentation, the underlying reasons or the higher end goals to investigate interactive play from a user's perspective, 2) Systems, the kind of systems that are created, this includes their intended use which fits the end user's perspective, 3) Evaluation, the way in which the researchers evaluate the system, 4) Contribution, the goal of the studies from the researcher's perspective; what does the study contribute to the research community. CAPs are often multimodal in nature; this survey pays attention to the multimodal characteristics in relation to all four aspects. This overview contributes a clearer view on the current literature, points out where new opportunities lie, and hands us the tools for what we think is important: bringing the end-user and research perspective together in intervention based evaluations. In short, this paper discusses CAPs: their past, the present, and the perspectives

Experience-driven MAR games: Personalising Mobile Augmented Reality games using Player Models

PhD ThesesWe are witnessing an unprecedented growth of Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) technologies, one of the main research areas being MAR games. While this field is still in its early days, researchers have shown the physical health benefits of playing these type of games. Computational models have been used in traditional (non-AR) digital games to predict player experience (PX). These models give designers insights about PX, and can also be used within games for real-time adaptation or personalised content generation. Following these findings, this thesis investigates the potential of creating models that use movement data and game metrics to predict PX. An initial pilot study is conducted to evaluate the use of movement data and game metrics to predict players’ emotional preferences between different game levels of an exploration-based MAR game. Results indicate that emotional preferences regarding frustration (≈ 93%) and challenge (≈ 93%) can be predicted to a reliable and reasonable degree of accuracy. To determine if these techniques can be applied to serious games for health, an AR exergame is developed for experiments two, three and four of this thesis. The second and third experiments aim to predict key experiential constructs, player competence and immersion, that are important to PX. These experiments further validate the use of movement data and game metrics to model different aspects of PX in MAR games. Results suggest that players’ competence (≈ 73%) and sense of mastery (≈ 81%) can be predicted to a reasonable degree of accuracy. For the final experiment, this mastery model is used to create a dynamic difficulty adaptation (DDA) system. The adaptive exergame is then evaluated against a non-adaptive variant of the same game. Results indicate that the adaptive game makes players feel a higher sense of confidence during gameplay and that the adaptation mechanics are more effective for players who do not engage in regular physical activity. Across the four studies presented, this thesis is the first known research activity that investigates using movement data and game metrics to model PX for DDA in MAR games and makes the following novel contributions: i) movement data and game metrics can be used to predict player’s sense of mastery or competence reliably compared to other aspects of PX tested, ii) mastery-based game adaptation makes players feel greater confidence during game-play, and iii) mastery-based game adaptation is more effective for players who do not engage in physical activity. This work also presents a new methodology for PX prediction in MAR games and a novel adaptation engine driven by player mastery. In summary, this thesis proposes that PX modelling can be successfully applied to MAR games, especially for DDA which results in a highly personalised PX and shows potential as a tool for increasing physical activity

Design for Child-Robot Play The implications of Design Research within the field of Human-Robot Interaction studies for Children

This thesis investigates the intersections of three disciplines, that are Design Research, Human-Robot Interaction studies, and Child Studies. In particular, this doctoral research is focused on two research questions, namely, what is (or might be) the role of design research in HRI? And, how to design acceptable and desirable child-robot play applications? The first chapter introduces an overview of the mutual interest between robotics and design that is at the basis of the research. On the one hand, the interest of design toward robotics is documented through some exemplary projects from artists and designers that speculate on the human-robot coexistence condition. Vice versa, the robotics interest toward design is documented by referring to some tracks of robotic conferences, scienti c workshops and robotics journals which focused on the design-robotics relationship. Finally, a brief description of the background conditions that characterized this doctoral research are introduced, such as the fact of being a research founded by a company. The second chapter provides an overview of the state of the art of the intersections between three multidisciplinary disciplines. First, a de nition of Design Research is provided, together with its main trends and open issues. Then, the review focuses on the contribution of Design Research to the HRI eld, which can be summed up in actions focused on three aspects: artefacts, stakeholders, and contexts. This is followed by a focus on the role of Design Research within the context of children studies, in which it is possible to identify two main design-child relationships: design as a method for developing children’s learning experiences; and children as part of the design process for developing novel interactive systems. The third chapter introduces the Research through Design (RtD) approach and its relevance in conducting design research in HRI. The proposed methodology, based on this approach, is particularly characterized by the presence of design explorations as study methods. These, in turn, are developed through a common project’s methodology, also reported in this chapter. The fourth chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the scenario in which the child-robot interaction takes place. This was aimed at understanding what is edutainment robotics for children, its common features, how it relates to existing children play types, and where the interaction takes place. The chapter provides also a focus on the relationship between children and technology on a more general level, through which two themes and relative design opportunities were identi ed: physically active play and objects-to-think-with. These were respectively addressed in the two design explorations presented in this thesis: Phygital Play and Shybo. The Phygital Play project consists of an exploration of natural interaction modalities with robots, through mixed-reality, for fostering children’s active behaviours. To this end, a game platform was developed for allowing children to play with or against a robot, through body movement. Shybo, instead, is a low-anthropomorphic robot for playful learning activities with children that can be carried out in educational contexts. The robot, which reacts to properties of the physical environment, is designed to support different kinds of experiences. Then, the chapter eight is dedicated to the research outcomes, that were de ned through a process of reflection. The contribution of the research was analysed and documented by focusing on three main levels, namely: artefact, knowledge and theory. The artefact level corresponds to the situated implementations developed through the projects. The knowledge level consists of a set of actionable principles, emerged from the results and lessons learned from the projects. At the theory level, a theoretical framework was proposed with the aim of informing the future design of child- robot play applications. Thelastchapterprovidesa naloverviewofthe doctoral research, a series of limitations regarding the research, its process and its outcomes, and some indications for future research