Designing an immersive and entertaining pervasive gameplay experience with spheros as game and interface elements

• Main Authors: JONES, Brennan, DILLMAN, Kody, MANESH, Setareh Aghel, SHARLIN, Ehud, TANG, Anthony
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: Controllers; Gaming experience; Immersion; Natural mappings; Pervasive gaming; Robotic ball; Sphero; Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces; Software Engineering
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/7986; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/8989/viewcontent/2658537.2661301.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

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.