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International Conference on Entertainment Computing

ICEC 2008: Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2008 pp 149–154Cite as

Designing Toys That Come Alive: Curious Robots for Creative Play

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Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 5309)

Abstract

Creative thinking requires imagination, creativity, play, sharing and reflection. This paper presents an architecture for a curious, reconfigurable robot that encourages creative design thinking by permitting designed structures to learn behaviours. These behaviours encourage designers to play with different structures, reflect on the relationship between structure and behaviour and imagine new structures. A demonstration of the architecture is described using the Lego Mindstorms platform. The demonstration shows how a curious robot can adapt new behaviours in response to changes in its structure, and how this can encourage the creative thinking spiral and creative design.

Keywords

  • Curiosity
  • motivated reinforcement learning
  • robots
  • creative design
  • creative play

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technologies and Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Northcott Drive, Canberra ACT, 2612

    Kathryn Merrick

Authors
  1. Kathryn Merrick
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human Computer Interaction Isntitute and Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University, PA 15213, Pittsburgh, USA

    Scott M. Stevens

  2. Entertainment Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon University, PA 15213, Pittsburgh, USA

    Shirley J. Saldamarco

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© 2008 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

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Merrick, K. (2008). Designing Toys That Come Alive: Curious Robots for Creative Play. In: Stevens, S.M., Saldamarco, S.J. (eds) Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2008. ICEC 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5309. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89222-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89222-9_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-89221-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-89222-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)