Towards Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals based on Natural User Interfaces

Tesis por compendioEl estudio de la interacción de los animales con la tecnología y el desarrollo de sistemas tecnológicos centrados en el animal está ganando cada vez más atención desde la aparición del área de Animal Computer Interaction (ACI). ACI persigue mejorar el bienestar de los animales en diferentes entornos a través del desarrollo de tecnología adecuada para ellos siguiendo un enfoque centrado en el animal. Entre las líneas de investigación que ACI está explorando, ha habido bastante interés en la interacción de los animales con la tecnología basada en el juego. Las actividades de juego tecnológicas tienen el potencial de proveer estimulación mental y física a los animales en diferentes contextos, pudiendo ayudar a mejorar su bienestar. Mientras nos embarcamos en la era de la Internet de las Cosas, las actividades de juego tecnológicas actuales para animales todavía no han explorado el desarrollo de soluciones pervasivas que podrían proveerles de más adaptación a sus preferencias a la vez que ofrecer estímulos tecnológicos más variados. En su lugar, estas actividades están normalmente basadas en interacciones digitales en lugar de explorar dispositivos tangibles o aumentar las interacciones con otro tipo de estímulos. Además, estas actividades de juego están ya predefinidas y no cambian con el tiempo, y requieren que un humano provea el dispositivo o la tecnología al animal. Si los humanos pudiesen centrarse más en su participación como jugadores de un sistema interactivo para animales en lugar de estar pendientes de sujetar un dispositivo para el animal o de mantener el sistema ejecutándose, esto podría ayudar a crear lazos más fuertes entre especies y promover mejores relaciones con los animales. Asimismo, la estimulación mental y física de los animales son aspectos importantes que podrían fomentarse si los sistemas de juego diseñados para ellos pudieran ofrecer un variado rango de respuestas, adaptarse a los comportamientos del animal y evitar que se acostumbre al sistema y pierda el interés. Por tanto, esta tesis propone el diseño y desarrollo de entornos tecnológicos de juego basados en Interfaces Naturales de Usuario que puedan adaptarse y reaccionar a las interacciones naturales de los animales. Estos entornos pervasivos permitirían a los animales jugar por si mismos o con una persona, ofreciendo actividades de juego más dinámicas y atractivas capaces de adaptarse con el tiempo.L'estudi de la interacció dels animals amb la tecnologia i el desenvolupament de sistemes tecnològics centrats en l'animal està guanyant cada vegada més atenció des de l'aparició de l'àrea d'Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) . ACI persegueix millorar el benestar dels animals en diferents entorns a través del desenvolupament de tecnologia adequada per a ells amb un enfocament centrat en l'animal. Entre totes les línies d'investigació que ACI està explorant, hi ha hagut prou interès en la interacció dels animals amb la tecnologia basada en el joc. Les activitats de joc tecnològiques tenen el potencial de proveir estimulació mental i física als animals en diferents contextos, podent ajudar a millorar el seu benestar. Mentre ens embarquem en l'era de la Internet de les Coses, les activitats de joc tecnològiques actuals per a animals encara no han explorat el desenvolupament de solucions pervasives que podrien proveir-los de més adaptació a les seues preferències al mateix temps que oferir estímuls tecnològics més variats. En el seu lloc, estes activitats estan normalment basades en interaccions digitals en compte d'explorar dispositius tangibles o augmentar les interaccions amb estímuls de diferent tipus. A més, aquestes activitats de joc estan ja predefinides i no canvien amb el temps, mentre requereixen que un humà proveïsca el dispositiu o la tecnologia a l'animal. Si els humans pogueren centrar-se més en la seua participació com a jugadors actius d'un sistema interactiu per a animals en compte d'estar pendents de subjectar un dispositiu per a l'animal o de mantenir el sistema executant-se, açò podria ajudar a crear llaços més forts entre espècies i promoure millors relacions amb els animals. Així mateix, l'estimulació mental i física dels animals són aspectes importants que podrien fomentar-se si els sistemes de joc dissenyats per a ells pogueren oferir un rang variat de respostes, adaptar-se als comportaments de l'animal i evitar que aquest s'acostume al sistema i perda l'interès. Per tant, esta tesi proposa el disseny i desenvolupament d'entorns tecnològics de joc basats en Interfícies Naturals d'Usuari que puguen adaptar-se i reaccionar a les interaccions naturals dels animals. Aquestos escenaris pervasius podrien permetre als animals jugar per si mateixos o amb una persona, oferint activitats de joc més dinàmiques i atractives que siguen capaces d'adaptar-se amb el temps.The study of animals' interactions with technology and the development of animal-centered technological systems is gaining attention since the emergence of the research area of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI). ACI aims to improve animals' welfare and wellbeing in several scenarios by developing suitable technology for the animal following an animal-centered approach. Among all the research lines ACI is exploring, there has been significant interest in animals' playful interactions with technology. Technologically mediated playful activities have the potential to provide mental and physical stimulation for animals in different environmental contexts, which could in turn help to improve their wellbeing. As we embark in the era of the Internet of Things, current technological playful activities for animals have not yet explored the development of pervasive solutions that could provide animals with more adaptation to their preferences as well as offering varied technological stimuli. Instead, playful technology for animals is usually based on digital interactions rather than exploring tangible devices or augmenting the interactions with different stimuli. In addition, these playful activities are already predefined and do not change over time, while they require that a human has to be the one providing the device or technology to the animal. If humans could focus more on their participation as active players of an interactive system aimed for animals instead of being concerned about holding a device for the animal or keep the system running, this might help to create stronger bonds between species and foster better relationships with animals. Moreover, animals' mental and physical stimulation are important aspects that could be fostered if the playful systems designed for animals could offer a varied range of outputs, be tailored to the animal's behaviors and prevented the animal to get used to the system and lose interest. Therefore, this thesis proposes the design and development of technological playful environments based on Natural User Interfaces that could adapt and react to the animals' natural interactions. These pervasive scenarios would allow animals to play by themselves or with a human, providing more engaging and dynamic playful activities that are capable of adapting over time.Pons Tomás, P. (2018). Towards Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals based on Natural User Interfaces [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/113075TESISCompendi

Personalización de comportamiento en ambientes inteligentes empleando una herramienta para superficies interactivas

[ES] Los espacios inteligentes se están convirtiendo en un futuro prometedor que aportarán indudables mejoras a la sociedad a medida que el número de dispositivos inteligentes capaces de formar parte de dichos entornos crece rápidamente. Puesto que la combinación de tantos y tan variados elementos inteligentes en un mismo espacio abre la puerta a nuevas oportunidades para mejorar la calidad de vida de las personas, también hace más complejo el desarrollo de sistemas capaces de adaptarse a la perfección a cualquier contexto o usuario. Y más todavía si se tiene en cuenta la naturaleza cambiante de los entornos o de las preferencias de las personas que los habitan. Por tanto, la personalización del comportamiento de estos sistemas inteligentes por parte de los usuarios finales de los mismos se plantea como una tarea de sumo interés. Sin embargo, puesto que estos usuarios no son expertos en el sistema ni suelen tener conocimientos de programación, es necesario proveer mecanismos sencillos para llevar a cabo una tarea compleja como es la especificación de comportamiento. Este trabajo presenta un editor visual basado en expresiones de flujos de datos para superficies interactivas que permitirá definir reglas de comportamiento en los futuros espacios inteligentes de manera natural y sencilla. Se ha llevado a cabo un estudio para demostrar la usabilidad del editor en base a la capacidad de usuarios no programadores de comprender las abstracciones y conceptos en los que se basa la herramienta, la facilidad de uso de la interfaz visual propuesta y la adecuación de los mecanismos de interacción multitacto y tangibles utilizados en la edición. Los resultados de este trabajo han demostrado que usuarios sin conocimientos previos de programación son capaces de utilizar correctamente la herramienta propuesta para definir reglas de comportamiento de cierta complejidad en el contexto de una casa inteligente. El estudio realizado ha permitido, además, detectar problemas leves de usabilidad a los que se ofrecerá solución en próximas versiones de la herramienta, y han surgido diversas líneas de actuación para acercar y hacer todavía más natural la personalización de ambientes reactivos.[EN] Smart environments are becoming a promising future that will bring improvements to our society as the number of intelligent devices capable of taking part in those environments is increasing very rapidly. As the combination of diverse and heterogeneous devices within the same environment will open a wide range of new opportunities to make our lives easier, developing systems which adapt perfectly to any context or user becomes a difficult task. If we consider the dynamic nature of the environments and their dwellers¿ preferences, it becomes even more complex. For this reason, allowing end-users to define behavior in their own smart environments stands as a very interesting feature. However, these users are non experts and usually do not have programming knowledge, so that easy mechanisms must be provided for performing such a demanding exercise. This work presents a purely visual rule editor based on dataflow expressions for interactive tabletops which allows behavior to be specified in smart environments. An experiment was carried out aimed at evaluating the usability of the editor in terms of non-programmers¿ understanding of the abstractions and concepts involved in the rule model, ease of use of the proposed visual interface and the suitability of the interaction mechanisms implemented in the editing tool. The study revealed that users with no previous programming experience were able to master the proposed rule model and editing tool for specifying behavior in the context of a smart home. Moreover, this study has revealed minor usability issues that will be solved in future versions of the editing tool, and several future work trends have emerged for making smart environments customization even more natural.Pons Tomás, P. (2013). Personalización de comportamiento en ambientes inteligentes empleando una herramienta para superficies interactivas. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/37596Archivo delegad

DaFRULE: un modelo de reglas enriquecido mediante flujos de datos para la definición visual de comportamientos en entornos reactivos

La definición de reglas de comportamiento para entornos reactivos es una tarea compleja para aquellos usuarios no expertos o sin conocimientos de programación previos. Las herramientas disponibles hasta la fecha para facilitar esta tarea o bien son poco flexibles y expresivas en cuanto a las reglas que permiten definir, o bien la expresividad es adecuada pero la herramienta es compleja de entender por usuarios no programadores. Dada la necesidad de proveer mecanismos que faciliten la tarea de edición de reglas de comportamiento, se ha desarrollado un lenguaje de reglas expresivo y genérico aplicable a diversos ámbitos. Se ha desarrollado un editor que hace uso de dicho lenguaje, así como un motor de procesamiento de reglas que permite emplear las reglas definidas con este lenguaje en la simulación de entornos reactivos. Se han llevado a cabo experimentos para validar la corrección del lenguaje propuesto, y la escalabilidad del motor de procesamiento de reglas.Pons Tomás, P. (2012). DaFRULE: un modelo de reglas enriquecido mediante flujos de datos para la definición visual de comportamientos en entornos reactivos. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/16539.Archivo delegad

Interactive spaces for children: gesture elicitation for controlling ground mini-robots

[EN] Interactive spaces for education are emerging as a mechanism for fostering children's natural ways of learning by means of play and exploration in physical spaces. The advanced interactive modalities and devices for such environments need to be both motivating and intuitive for children. Among the wide variety of interactive mechanisms, robots have been a popular research topic in the context of educational tools due to their attractiveness for children. However, few studies have focused on how children would naturally interact and explore interactive environments with robots. While there is abundant research on full-body interaction and intuitive manipulation of robots by adults, no similar research has been done with children. This paper therefore describes a gesture elicitation study that identified the preferred gestures and body language communication used by children to control ground robots. The results of the elicitation study were used to define a gestural language that covers the different preferences of the gestures by age group and gender, with a good acceptance rate in the 6-12 age range. The study also revealed interactive spaces with robots using body gestures as motivating and promising scenarios for collaborative or remote learning activities.This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by the Spanish MINECO (TIN2014-60077-R). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Special thanks are due to the children and teachers of the Col-legi Public Vicente Gaos for their valuable collaboration and dedication.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2020). Interactive spaces for children: gesture elicitation for controlling ground mini-robots. 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Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-546-4_6Play stands as one of the most natural and inherent behavior among the majority of living species, specifically humans and animals. Human play has evolved significantly over the years, and so have done the artifacts which allow us to play: from children playing tag games without any tools other than their bodies, to modern video games using haptic and wearable devices to augment the playful experience. However, this ludic revolution has not been the same for the humans’ closest companions, our pets. Recently, a new discipline inside the human–computer interaction (HCI) community, called animal–computer interaction (ACI), has focused its attention on improving animals’ welfare using technology. Several works in the ACI field rely on playful interfaces to mediate this digital communication between animals and humans. Until now, the development of these interfaces only comprises a single goal or activity, and its adaptation to the animals’ needs requires the developers’ intervention. This work analyzes the existing approaches, proposing a more generic and autonomous system aimed at addressing several aspects of animal welfare at a time: Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. The great potential of these systems is discussed, explaining how incorporating intelligent capabilities within playful environments could allow learning from the animals’ behavior and automatically adapt the game to the animals’ needs and preferences. The engaging playful activities created with these systems could serve different purposes and eventually improve animals’ quality of life.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science andInnovation under the National R&D&I Program within the projects Create Worlds (TIN2010-20488) and SUPEREMOS (TIN2014-60077-R), and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within theVALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by the Universitat Politècnica de València under the “Beca de Excelencia” program and currently by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (FPU13/03831).Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals. En More Playful User Interfaces: Interfaces that Invite Social and Physical Interaction. Springer. 121-150. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-546-4_6S121150Alfrink, K., van Peer, I., Lagerweij H, et al.: Pig Chase. Playing with Pigs project. (2012) www.playingwithpigs.nlAmat, M., Camps, T., Le, Brech S., Manteca, X.: Separation anxiety in dogs: the implications of predictability and contextual fear for behavioural treatment. Anim. Welf. 23(3), 263–266 (2014). doi: 10.7120/09627286.23.3.263Barker, S.B., Dawson, K.S.: The effects of animal-assisted therapy on anxiety ratings of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Psychiatr. Serv. 49(6), 797–801 (1998)Bateson, P., Martin, P.: Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation. Cambridge University Press, New York (2013)Bekoff, M., Allen, C.: Intentional communication and social play: how and why animals negotiate and agree to play. In: Bekoff, M., Byers, J.A. (eds.) Animal Play Evolutionary. Comparative and Ecological Perspectives, pp. 97–114. Cambridge University Press, New York (1997)Burghardt, G.M.: The Genesis of Animal Play. Testing the Limits. MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)Catalá, A., Pons, P., Jaén, J., et al.: A meta-model for dataflow-based rules in smart environments: evaluating user comprehension and performance. Sci. Comput. Prog. 78(10), 1930–1950 (2013). doi: 10.1016/j.scico.2012.06.010Cheok, A.D., Tan, R.T.K.C., Peiris, R.L., et al.: Metazoa ludens: mixed-reality interaction and play for small pets and humans. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man. Cybern.—Part A Syst. Hum. 41(5), 876–891 (2011). doi: 10.1109/TSMCA.2011.2108998Costello, B., Edmonds, E.: A study in play, pleasure and interaction design. In: Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, pp. 76–91 (2007)Csikszentmihalyi, M.: Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. The Experience of Play in Work and Games. 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CHI ’13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM Press, New York, pp. 2227–2236 (2013)Mancini, C., van der Linden, J.: UbiComp for animal welfare: envisioning smart environments for kenneled dogs. In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 117–128 (2014)Mancini, C., Harris, R., Aengenheister, B., Guest, C.: Re-centering multispecies practices: a canine interface for cancer detection dogs. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing System, pp. 2673–2682 (2015)Mancini, C., van der Linden, J., Bryan, J., Stuart, A.: Exploring interspecies sensemaking: dog tracking semiotics and multispecies ethnography. In: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing—UbiComp ’12. ACM Press, New York, pp. 143–152 (2012)Mankoff, D., Dey, A.K., Mankoff, J., Mankoff, K.: Supporting interspecies social awareness: using peripheral displays for distributed pack awareness. 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In: CHI ’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2661–2669 (2010

Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?

Our digital world evolves towards ubiquitous and intuitive scenarios, filled with interconnected and transparent computing devices which ease our daily activities. We have approached this evolution of technology in a strictly human-centric manner. There are, however, plenty of species, among them our pets, which could also profit from these technological advances. A new field in Computer Science, called Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), aims at filling this technological gap by developing systems and interfaces specifically designed for animals. This paper envisions how ACI could be extended to enhance the most natural animal behavior: play. This work explains how interactive environments could become playful scenarios where animals enjoy, learn and interact with technology, improving their wellbeingThis work is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU13/03831). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). We also thank the Valencian Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants (SVPAP) for their cooperation.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?. ACM. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/65361

Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals

© ACM 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (p. 59). http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007.[EN] Digital games for animals within Animal Computer Interaction are usually single-device oriented, however richer interactions could be delivered by considering multimodal environments and expanding the number of technological elements involved. In these playful ecosystems, animals could be either alone or accompanied by human beings, but in both cases the system should react properly to the interactions of all the players, creating more engaging and natural games. Technologically-mediated playful scenarios for animals will therefore require contextual information about the game participants, such as their location or body posture, in order to suitably adapt the system reactions. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for cats capable of detecting their location, body posture and field of view. The proposed system could also be extended to locate and detect human gestures and track small robots, becoming a promising component in the creation of intelligent interspecies playful environments.Work supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the EDRF-FEDER (TIN2014-60077-R). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Alejandro Catalá also received support from a VALi+d fellowship from the GVA (APOSTD/2013/013). Special thanks to our cat participants, their owners, and our feline caretakers and therapistsPons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007SJan Bednarik and David Herman. 2015. Human gesture recognition using top view depth data obtained from Kinect sensor.Excel. - Student Conf. Innov. Technol. Sci. IT, 1--8.Hrvoje Benko, Andrew D. Wilson, Federico Zannier, and Hrvoje Benko. 2014. Dyadic projected spatial augmented reality.Proc. 27th Annu. ACM Symp. User interface Softw. Technol. - UIST '14, 645--655.Alper Bozkurt, David L Roberts, Barbara L Sherman, et al. 2014. Toward Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue.IEEE Intell. Syst. 29, 6, 32--39.Rita Brugarolas, Robert T. Loftin, Pu Yang, David L. Roberts, Barbara Sherman, and Alper Bozkurt. 2013. 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Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals' behavior using depth-based tracking

[EN] There is growing interest in the automatic detection of animals' behaviors and body postures within the field of Animal Computer Interaction, and the benefits this could bring to animal welfare, enabling remote communication, welfare assessment, detection of behavioral patterns, interactive and adaptive systems, etc. Most of the works on animals' behavior recognition rely on wearable sensors to gather information about the animals' postures and movements, which are then processed using machine learning techniques. However, non-wearable mechanisms such as depth-based tracking could also make use of machine learning techniques and classifiers for the automatic detection of animals' behavior. These systems also offer the advantage of working in set-ups in which wearable devices would be difficult to use. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for the automatic detection of animals' postures and body parts, as well as an exhaustive evaluation on the performance of several classification algorithms based on both a supervised and a knowledge-based approach. The evaluation of the depth -based tracking system and the different classifiers shows that the system proposed is promising for advancing the research on animals' behavior recognition within and outside the field of Animal Computer Interaction. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish MINECO with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catala (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Special thanks to our cat participants and their owners, and many thanks to our feline caretakers and therapists, Olga, Asier and Julia, for their valuable collaboration and their dedication to animal wellbeing.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2017). Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals' behavior using depth-based tracking. Expert Systems with Applications. 86:235-246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2017.05.063S2352468

Customizing smart environments: a tabletop approach

Smart environments are becoming a reality in our society and the number of intelligent devices integrated in these spaces is in-creasing very rapidly. As the combination of intelligent elements will open a wide range of new opportunities to make our lives easier, final users should be provided with a simplified method of handling complex intelligent features. Specifying behavior in these environments can be difficult for non-experts, so that more efforts should be directed towards easing the customization tasks. This work presents an entirely visual rule editor based on dataflow expressions for interactive tabletops which allows be-havior to be specified in smart environments. An experiment was carried out aimed at evaluating the usability of the editor in terms of non-programmers understanding of the abstractions and concepts involved in the rule model, ease of use of the pro-posed visual interface and the suitability of the interaction mechanisms implemented in the editing tool. The study revealed that users with no previous programming experience were able to master the proposed rule model and editing tool for specifying be-havior in the context of a smart home, even though some minor usability issues were detected.We would like to thank all the volunteers that participated in the empirical study. Our thanks are also due to the ASIC/Polimedia team for their computer hardware support. This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catala (APOSTD/2013/013). 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Animal Ludens: Building Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals

© ACM (2014). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in {Source Publication}, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2693787.2693794Looking for effective ways to understand how animals interact with computer-mediated systems, Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) research should rely on the most natural and intrinsic behavior among the majority of living species: play. Animals are naturally motivated towards playing. Playful environments are, therefore, a promising scenario in which to start developing animal-centered ecosystems, and there are plenty of circumstances where playful environments could help to improve animals well-being. However, developing a custom system for each possible context remains unfeasible, and more appealing solutions are required. If playful environments were equipped with intelligent capabilities, they could learn from the animals behavior and automatically adapt themselves to the animals needs and preferences by creating engaging playful activities for different purposes. Hence, this work will define intelligent playful environments for animals and explain how Ambient Intelligence (AmI) can contribute to create adaptable playful experiences for animals in order to improve their quality of life.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). 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