Via: MIT Media Lab - Playware: Robots at Play
Professor Henrik Hautop Lund, Center for Playware at Technical University of Denmark (who I was fortunate enough to meet f2f at the Games For Health 2010 yesterday closing in Boston), has also delivered his talk at the MIT Media Lab complex on May 28.
Professor Henrik Hautop Lund is known internationally for his work in bringing robotics to use in novel ways. He has recently founded the Center for Playware to focus even further on how playful aspects of robotics may provide motivation for any citizen to perform different kinds of interaction with the robots of our future daily life. Lund has shown how the combination of a modern artificial intelligence, modular robotics and entertainment may provide novel opportunities in play, rehabilitation, sport, music, and teaching, because the approach provides non-expert users easy access to the technology in a playful and motivating way.
Professor Lund defines Playware as the use of technology to create the kind of leisure activities we normally label play, i.e. intelligent hardware and software that aims at producing play and playful experiences among users and of which e.g. computer games are a sub-genre.
He has developed a system composed of different modular robotic devices, which can be used e.g. as a multi-sensory room in hospital settings. The system engages the user in physical activities, providing immediate feedback based upon physical interaction.
The devices such as modular robotic tiles and cubic I-BLOCKS, make it possible to create applications with different stimuli and to dynamically change parameters for explicit immediate feedback to the users, thus not requiring any prior knowledge of the application.
The modular robotic tiles have been used in various therapeutic setups:
Modular robotic tiles for cardiac rehabilitation at the hospital Sygehus Fyn Svendborg
A child with autism playing with the modular robotic tiles
Children creating music with the cubic I-BLOCKS: