Disrupting the Industry with Play

Decades of research into intelligent, playful technology and user-friendly man-machine interfaces has provided important insight into the creation of robotic systems and intelligent interactive systems which are much more user-friendly, safer and cheaper than what appeared possible merely a decade or two ago. This is significantly disrupting the industry in several market sectors. This paper describes the components of the playware and embodied artificial intelligence research that has led to disruption in the industrial robotics sector, and which points to the next disruption of the health care sector. This includes playful robotics, LEGO robots for kids, minimal robot systems, user-friendly, behavior-based, biomimetic, modular robotics and intelligent systems. The insight into these components and the use in synthesis for designing robots and intelligent systems allows anybody, anywhere, anytime to use these systems, providing an unforeseen flexibility into the sectors, which become disrupted with these systems