Sphero Sumo

In collaboration with Kody Dillman, Setareh Aghel Manesh, Ehud Sharlin, and Anthony Tang

The Sphero is a robotic remote-controlled ball capable of rolling around on its own in any direction at multiple speeds. Numerous games have been designed for the Sphero for smartphones and tablets. However, most of these games provide an interface for controlling the Sphero that is far from natural. These games also do not put a strong focus on the physical environment around the Sphero. This work discusses a control scheme used to control a Sphero with another Sphero, and a pervasive game leveraging this scheme that emphasizes physical properties of the environment to create an immersive experience.

Publications

• Jones, B., Dillman, K., Manesh, S.A., Sharlin, E., and Tang, A. Designing an Immersive and Entertaining Pervasive Gameplay Experience with Spheros as Game and Interface Elements. In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY 2014), ACM.
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