  We present a new paradigm of games, i.e. SwarmPlay, where each playing
component is presented by an individual drone that has its own mobility and
swarm intelligence to win against a human player. The motivation behind the
research is to make the games with machines tangible and interactive. Although
some research on the robotic players for board games already exists, e.g.,
chess, the SwarmPlay technology has the potential to offer much more engagement
and interaction with a human as it proposes a multi-agent swarm instead of a
single interactive robot. The proposed system consists of a robotic swarm, a
workstation, a computer vision (CV), and Game Theory-based algorithms. A novel
game algorithm was developed to provide a natural game experience to the user.
The preliminary user study revealed that participants were highly engaged in
the game with drones (69% put a maximum score on the Likert scale) and found it
less artificial compared to the regular computer-based systems (77% put maximum
score). The affection of the user's game perception from its outcome was
analyzed and put under discussion. User study revealed that SwarmPlay has the
potential to be implemented in a wider range of games, significantly improving
human-drone interactivity.
