Bubble Jumper
Enhancing the Traditional Japanese Sport Sumo with Physical Augmentation
Ryoichi Ando
Keio University Graduate School ofMedia Design
Yokohama, Japan
andoryoichi@kmd.keio.ac.jp

Akihiro Ando
Hashilus Co., Ltd.
Tokyo, Japan

Kai Kunze, Kouta Minamizawa
Keio University Graduate School ofMedia Design
Yokohama, Japan
kai/kouta@kmd.keio.ac.jp

Figure 1: Bubble Jumper a superhuman sport providing you the experience of an augmented sumo wrestler.

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces Bubble Jumper, a super human sportenhancing your jump and enlarge your bodies circumference(grith) simulating an augmented sumo wrestler. We focus on
the experience of superhuman strength in the legs and giving
you the feeling of a larger body for the sport. We present
the historical context of Sumo as well as our approach toaugment the sport into Bubble Jumper. We show some early
design prototypes and the iterative process to improve them,as well as rules and ideas for digital augmentation of the
sport.
KEYWORDS
Bubble Jumper, superhuman, sports
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SHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6407-2/18/07. . . $15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3210299.3210301

ACM Reference Format:
Ryoichi Ando, Akihiro Ando, and Kai Kunze, Kouta Minamizawa.
2018. Bubble Jumper: Enhancing the Traditional Japanese Sport
Sumo with Physical Augmentation. In SHS ’18: Superhuman Sports
Design Challenge: First International Symposium on Amplifying Capabilities and Competing in Mixed Realities, July 2–5, 2018, Delft,
Netherlands. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.
1145/3210299.3210301

1 INTRODUCTION
Since our early childhood we have the image of superheroes
being so mighty and inhumanely powerful, being able to see
through the walls, fly, read people’s thoughts, see the futureand fire laser beams through with their eyes [11]. Practicallyevery kid exposed to Japanese Manga or Western Comics atleast for a moment dreamed of having such powers. Bringing
this childhood dream into reality, at least for one moment, isthe main motivation behind the Superhuman Sports Society(S3), established by a group of leading researchers, athletes,
artists, and engineers in Japan. Before introducing the reader
with the main contents of the paper we find it necessary tospend a moment to provide the context of this work.
The Superhuman Sports Society concentrates its efforts oncreating new augmented sports that can equalize the playersof different body size and structure and base the "competitive" part of the sports around empowering technology andSHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands

Ryoichi Ando, Akihiro Ando, and Kai Kunze, Kouta Minamizawa

the player’s ability to use it [8]. Technological augmentation
can allow the players to use powers they do not possess ineveryday life, such as increased strength using exoskeletons,
higher jumping using stilts, sensory substitution or visual
overlays using AR/VR technology [2]. By augmenting improving the natural human abilities we can level them amongplayers of different physique, age or gender, which would
make the player’s skills more important than physical abilities. Obviously novel or augmented abilities give players thepowers that people normally do not posses, hence the nameof the society. Augmented or novel abilities can be easily
called "superhuman", as they can surpass by a great margin
what people normally capable of doing. Democratization ofsports, leveling the players and novel abilities are the key
factors for a superhuman sport, but still competitiveness,
joy of participation, and amusement to the spectators are
considered to be important factors as well.
The aim of this work is to explore how we can empower
players (with different backgrounds and skill sets) to experience superhuman powers [8]. In this paper, we study anddocument our work in progress on a Superhuman Gamethat gives players the feeling of being a powerful augmented
Sumo wrestler. Traditionally, Sumo wrestlers are well known
for their body mass and their considerate strength and force [5,6]. However, this requires a dedicated and very regimented
lifestyle, and impacts their life expectancy. We wondered if
it is possible to enable the players to become an augmented
Sumo wrestler, by giving them stronger legs and a larger
girth. In this work we will also discuss other technologies weused during prototyping and our plans for the future work.
We present "Bubble Jumper", a fusion of traditional Japanese competitive sport "Sumo" with technological augmentation. Our first attempts focus mostly on physical and mechanical augmentations (jumping stilts and a bubble bumper).
Bubble Jumper is a wrestling-like competitive game thatfinds it roots in traditional Japanese Sumo, where rikishi(wrestler) attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring. Superhuman Sports are concentrated on humanaugmentation and seamless human-technology integration,and the Bubble Jumper aims to augment our ability to jump,
move and absorb shock using foot strengthening devices
and a bubble-like transparent shock damper. Dampers assure players’ safety and easy-to-use jumping stilts allow evencomplete novices with close to no training to enjoy the game.
The main contributions of the paper are as follows: (1)We present "bubble jumper" a novel superhuman sport. We
want to explore how to augment the user so they can feelas powerful as a Sumo wrestler. (2) We focus on the clash
between wrestlers at the beginning of a fight and trying to
replicate and enhance it. We show our prototyping process toaugment this part of a fight. (3) We show future technologicalpossibilities to enhance the user experience of the bubble
jumper sport.
2

HISTORY AND APPROACH

Figure 2: Traditional Sumoue, Kunisada Utagawa.

In this project, we are attempting to combine the long history of traditional Japanese combat sport, Japanese folklore
and human augmentation, by letting the players feel like
Sumo wrestlers.
"Sumo" has its roots in a Shinto ritual related to harvestand is held in order to in honor the Shinto gods, Kami. Durin
the ritual the two rikishi (wrestlers), were trying to attract
the attention of the gods by ritual movements (clapping andfoot stomps) to get gods’ favor and increase the strength
for the competition. Strong Sumo wrestlers were regarded
as "blessed by the gods". Given the spiritual roots of thisgame as well as the supernatural belief in the wrestlers being
empowered by the gods, let us classify Bubble Jumper as"Superhuman Sports."
From this Shinto ritual, Sumo developed into a traditional
sport. Normally, Sumo wrestlers have to follow strict lifestyle,and be very disciplined considering their nutrition and exercise routines. It takes years to build the body mass, flexibility,
force and dexterity that are required for the sport. Therefore, casual fans or people interested in practicing Sumo areusually deterred. Sumo is probably one of most demanding
sports in regards of body strength and size, which makes leveling the players and lowering the requirements for player’s
physique a very interesting challenge. It seems to be a perfect candidate to base a new Superhuman Sport on, considering the vision and mission of the Superhuman Sports
Society. Being a rikishi is more of a lifestyle, rather than mere
skill. Letting people experience something akin to a Sumo
wrestling match without years of diet and special training is
the motivation of this project.
The most noticeable differences between a professional
Sumo wrestler and an average person are their size, massand the physical strength. Altering these two characteristics
in order to turn average unprepared players into the Sumo

Bubble Jumper
wrestlers is not as straightforward as it may seem. Adding
extra weight to level an average person with a Sumo wrestler
would imply increased requirements to the player’s physique,which is contradicting one of the main principles of theSuperhuman Sports Society, the democratization of sports.
Mass aside we are left with two aspects, size and strength.
Inspiration for idea on how to increase and level the strengthof the players also came from Japanese culture, but this time
contemporary.
Our other source of inspiration is "Mecha", a classic genreof Japanese Anime and Manga. Humanoid robots, ranging
from large to gigantic are the cornerstone of Mecha. "Mecha"
usually refers to a type of exoskeleton or mobile suit that ishumanoid in shape but bigger than an actual human and iscontrolled by the pilot from a cockpit inside the machine. The
pilot of a Mecha can perform "Superhuman" actions using
it (flying, jumping high, etc.) [3]. "Bubble Jumper" is ourattempt of letting the players to take part in an augmented
Sumo match, combining the force, size and sense of massof a sumo wrestler using exoskeleton-like enhancements.
Main inspiration for this work that comes from the Mecha
genre is the incredible physical strength that the humanpilot has while operating the machine. Indeed the physicalstrength required to participate in a professional sumo matchis exceeding the average by a great margin.
For this work we decided to focus on two design requirements. First, enhancing the force of the players using wearable body addons, similar to power suits or exoskeletons. Second, physical size expansion. These are basically the two "superpowers" we concentrate on. Both are inspired by Mecha
Anime and the Sumo Sport. In the following, we will explain
our design process and prototyping.
3 PROTOTYPING AND DESIGNFor both "superpowers" we followed an iterative design process. Our attempts, trials and design decisions are describedin detail below.
Force Enhancement
Since we want to give the user the feeling of being stronger
than normal, we have to design a way to to convey thatfeeling and decide on which muscles to focus the most. Obviously, considering a typical sumo match, arms and legs are
the first to come to mind. We decided to begin with legs, inorder to to augment jumping and the sumo clash. We tried
several muscle enhancements from rigid exoskeletons and artificial muscle gel tubes to electric muscle stimulation. Finallya mechanical enhancement of jumping stilts was chosen as
the most viable approach.
We ruled out rigid electric motor exoskeletons as being too
dangerous for a two player contact sport [12]. Torque and

SHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands
speed need to be carefully adjusted and controlled, otherwise
the exoskeleton can injure the players.
Soft artificial muscles are a promising direction [7, 10]. Yet
given our limited time in prototyping, we decided against
them. We faced a major issue with them: The force you canprovide is limited by the air pressure. This means the user
has to carry around a large/heavy compressor, or a long tailof pipes, which also can lead to injuries and not suitable fora sport that requires the players to move freely on the field.
Electric muscle stimulation (EMS) seems interesting foractivating a muscle movement (and also for training purposes
to increase muscle mass), however we cannot really amplify
the force [9]. EMS just activates the already existing muscle.
From early prototypes, the users felt that it’s not enhancing
their movement and it’s a bit unpleasant to use.

Figure 3: Jumping stilts used for jumping and speed enhancement

Our final choice for force enhancement, are jumping stilts
as seen in Figure 3. They are just mechanical enhancements
augmenting the user’s legs. With these enhancements, users
can jump up to 1.2 metres high and run as fast as 30 Km/hdepending on the stilts model [1]. Although they are justmechanical enhancers, they conveyed the feeling we wanted
to induce better than the other technologies.
Physical Expansion
We also want to give the user the sensation of being taller
and heavier in mass, as if they were piloting a "Mecha" enhancement and the body build of a Sumo wrestler.
At first we considered a Mixed Reality environment inwhich the users battle in miniature city scape giving them
the feeling of being huge compared to their surrounding.
However, early tests did not seem to provide the desired
impression. Also full-body tracking of the two combatants
was difficult.
We considered several inflatable additions to the bodyto give it additional weight and volume. We settled on a
bubble bumper used in bubble soccer practice as seen in
Figure 5 [4]. First of all, it conveys the increased body volume
and is reasonably heavy to give a feeling of being a sumo
wrestler. Additionally, it surrounds and protects the bodysimilar to a mobile suit exoskeleton. The user enters theSHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands

Ryoichi Ando, Akihiro Ando, and Kai Kunze, Kouta Minamizawa

Figure 4: Users playing bubble jumper with bubble bumperand jumping stilts

Figure 6: Bubble Bumper with injected helium gas

interior of the sphere, carries it on both shoulders, and grips
the handle at the front, giving the user a feeling of body
volume augmentation.
The bubble bumper not only prevents the body from directly colliding with the ground but can also act as a safety
buffer zone for collisions occurring during game play. The
bubble works well together with the jumping stilts as it
makes the usage of the stilts safer.
The jumping stilts also contribute to the physical expansion, as they add ca. 25 cm to 45 cm to the user’s height,
depending on the model used.
4 BUBBLE JUMPER IMPLEMENTATION
After describing the design process and considerations, we
explain the current hardware used and the rules of the game.
HardwareAs described before, the Bubble Jumper players are wearing
jumping stilts and are equipped with a bubble bumper. To
increase the force enhancement of the jumping movement,
we tried several additions to the stilts and bubble.

Figure 7: Jumping Stilts with a haptic feedback system attached.

For the jumping stilts we added haptic feedback (vibrotacticle motors) to and accelerometers to the legs to increase
the feeling of stomping on the ground (see Figure 7). As the
feedback from users who tried it was mixed, we also see thisas a variant and will continue.

Figure 5: Falling Test

To make users fly higher while jumping, we filled the
bubble with Helium gas. Initial tests were successful. It’s aneffective way to increase the jump height and the durationin air. However, it takes away the heaviness and solidity
feeling of the weight of the bubble (associated with a Sumoor Mecha). Therefore it’s a variant that’s possible. Yet, not
the recommended bubble jumper setup.

Figure 8: Optical Judgment System: a photoelectric barrier

To judge is a user left/stepped out of the the ring, we use
photoelectric barrier sensor (see Figure 8).
For the Superhuman Design Competition, we will haveseveral variants of the hardware to try out and test.

Bubble Jumper
Rules
The rules are adopted from Sumo wrestling. The user wins
if the opponent lands with parts other than the feet on the
ground and if the user pushes the opponent out of the field.
The size of the field is octagonal with each side being 9m (shown in Figures 9 and 10). The field can be adapted,
minimum recommended field size is 7 by 7 meters (determined over test trials). The octagon is surrounded by a squarethat only the players can access. This helps to prevent any
accidents between users and spectators.
In order to become a player, users need to have sufficient
practice with the equipment. A coach approves a user assessing his ability to stand and move with stilts and bubble.
Even though it is not as dedicated as Sumo, Bubble Jumper
requires still substantial balance and athletic skills to play.

SHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands

Figure 10: Bubble Jumper Arena

Figure 11: Practice Session at the Laval Virtual Festival in
Laval, France

Figure 9: Bubble Jumper Field Size

In Figure 9 the schematic of the Bubble Jumper field isdepicted. Each game follows a similar rite to Sumo, the twoplayers are introduced by a judge. The players can show somepower moves (like stomping, high jumps). If both players
agree, the judge starts the match. As mentioned above, aplayer wins if the opponent lands with parts other than thefeet on the ground and if the player pushes the opponentout of the field. The judge gives the final ruling. A match isusually pretty fast (1-10 minutes), depending on the players.
5 SHOWCASES AND PLAYER FEEDBACK
We were able to showcase and testrun bubble jumper inover 20 national and international events see Figure 11 andFigure 12. So far more than 30 people have played the sport.
Each competition was open to the public. Several people
tried out to walk on stilts. We provided different sizes ofstilts (this can be used as a category for the sport similar

Figure 12: Practice Session at the Niigata University of
Health and Welfare

to weight classes). If a person felt comfortable, they wereassessed by a bubble jumper coach (one of our personal withsports background) to see if they are ready to compete.

Figure 13: Practice Session for a Bubble Jumper Competition

SHS ’18, July 2–5, 2018, Delft, Netherlands

Ryoichi Ando, Akihiro Ando, and Kai Kunze, Kouta Minamizawa

Figure 13 shows the practice sessions including stilts training. After the training, selected candidates can compete in
the tournament as seen in Figure 14.

Figure 14: Bubble Jumper TournamentInterestingly, it seems that the sport emphasises specificskills away from simple size, body mass and fitness of theparticipants. We could perceive interesting strategies fromparticipants in the Bubble Jumper trial tournaments. Some
players were using high jumps to try to intimidate the opponents. Others used the friction on the rubber bubbles after
the clash to bring the opponent off balance.
6 DISCUSSION AND FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS
Although initially thought of as a mixed reality sport using
visual augmentation to give the users the feeling of being abuilding size, augmented sumo wrestler, we decided for our
first implementation to stay with a mechanical augmentation
approach. The main reason behind this decision: we wanted
the game to be a contact sport and given trouble and delay
with tracking and other technical difficulties (e.g. fragilityof VR/AR equipment) made it hard to implement it in an
augmented reality scenario.
We are already working on several enhancements. We areworking on mounting VR headsets in the bubble bumpers.
Yet there is a high risk of injury, so we are assessing the rightmaterials for that.
Haptic and in general somatosensory feedback is also explored already. Simple vibro tactile actuators can enhance
the stomping for some players. We want to test thermal
feedback for the clash between bubbles to give a more emboddied feeling to the wrestling (also more feedback related
to the friction between bubbles, as some players used it as a
strategic mechanism to win).
Projection Mapping technologies was also tried, yet wasdifficult to do on the bubbles. We are currently experimenting
with retroreflective materials related to that.
7 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we present Bubble Jumper, a SuperhumanSport inspired by the tradition of Sumo Wrestling and Mecha
Anime to convey the superpowers of force enhancement andphysical extension. We showed our prototyping process forboth powers and the final hardware/rules design. Finally we
discussed about potential enhancements and future work.
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