Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life, Vol. 3, No. 1 (June 2016), 13-16

Disrupting the Industry with PlayHenrik Hautop Lund

Center for Playware, Technical University of Denmark, Building 326, 2800 Kgs. Lyngby, DenmarkE-mail: hhl@playware.dtu.dk
www.playware.elektro.dtu.dk

Abstract
Decades of research into intelligent, playful technology and user-friendly man-machine interfaces has provided
important insight into the creation of robotic systems and intelligent interactive systems which are much more userfriendly, safer and cheaper than what appeared possible merely a decade or two ago. This is significantly disrupting
the industry in several market sectors. This paper describes the components of the playware and embodied artificial
intelligence research that has led to disruption in the industrial robotics sector, and which points to the next
disruption of the health care sector. This includes playful robotics, LEGO robots for kids, minimal robot systems,
user-friendly, behavior-based, biomimetic, modular robotics and intelligent systems. The insight into thesecomponents and the use in synthesis for designing robots and intelligent systems allows anybody, anywhere,anytime to use these systems, providing an unforeseen flexibility into the sectors, which become disrupted withthese systems.
Keywords: Playware, user-friendly, modular robots, playful robotics and intelligent systems.

1. Introduction
Over the last half century, most robots have beencharacterized by being large, squared, metallic and hard
objects, which are controlled by fairly complicatedcontrol software to the novice user. This led to large
robots, for instance employed in the heavy industries incar factories, shipyards, etc. installed by highly skilledengineers. These robots were automatic in the sense thatthey were self-regulating, but did not make the laws that
their regulatory activities seek to satisfy. These laws
were given to the robot, or built into the robot. They
were done so by engineers with years of training, andexperience with control theory and practice. In manycases, the large, squared, metallic and hard robots werekept in a cage to perform their actions in order to screen

away human beings for security reason, since being hit
by one of the large robots could be deadly to a humanbeing.
Since these industrial robots had their clear place inautomating the industry, it became standard to develop
and utilize such robots with this approach, and mostresearchers and roboticists would adhere to thisstandard.
Nevertheless, decades of research into intelligent,
playful technology and user-friendly man-machineinterfaces has provided important insight into thecreation of robotic systems and intelligent interactive
systems which are much more user-friendly, safer andcheaper than what appeared possible merely a decade or
two ago, and this is now disrupting the industry.

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2. Play and playful robotics
The basis of such disruption of the industry is the quest
to create truly user-friendly robotic systems. Since the1990’s, with a bottom-up approach, we haveinvestigated how to create minimal robot systems thatare playful to interact with, in order to develop
technological systems that anybody can interact with.
Play is important, since play is a free and voluntary
activity that we do for no other purpose than play itself[1]. We play for the enjoyment. So installing play in theinteraction can lead to people interacting with thesystem out of their own free will and enjoyment.
Further, when in play, people performs an ontologicalshift according to Gadamer [2], and almost become
another representation of themselves when they forget
about time and place. In such a state of being, i.e. in aplay dynamics, people can often perform more than theywould normally do [3].
The first playful robot systems were in the form ofKhepera miniature robots and LEGO robot prototypes,
before we started the collaboration with LEGO on thedevelopment of LEGO Mindstorms robots. The
development of these robotic systems in the 1990’s
facilitatedthedevelopmentand
practical
experimentation of modern artificial intelligence withartificial life experiments, evolutionary robotics, userguided evolutionary robotics, and user-guided behaviorbased robotics.

systems that anybody – even young children – could
interact with and understand within minutes. This focus
on the user and understandable interaction for anybody
within minutes distinguished the research anddevelopment from the traditional robot, automation, andcontrol research.
The experiments resulted in an understanding of
how minimal robot systems can result in task-fullfilling
behavior guided by the user in different ways. One
example is the development of user-guided behaviorbased systems, in which the engineer develops theprimitive behavior modules, and the end-user is allowed
to combine the primitive behaviors to coordinate these
into the overall behavior of the robotic system. Since theengineer performs the difficult task of handling thedetails (e.g. reading, interpretation and classification of
sensory signals; and complicated motor commands) inthe design and debugging of the primitive behaviors, theend-user can work on the higher abstraction level ofcombining these primitive behaviors with no need ofknowledge of the (more complicated) low-level details.
This approach of creating user-friendly robot control for
any user with user-guided behavior-based systems wasdeveloped and verified on LEGO Mindstorms robots for
RoboCup Junior [4], for the LEGO Mindstorm Europe
launch tour with a robotic orchestra, robot fashion show,and robot art show, for the RoboCup Humanoids
Freestyle World Champion 2002 [5]. Further, it became
the basis for the development of user-friendly modular
robotic systems such as the I-Blocks [6], in which eachof the primitive behaviors is a module, and the user isallowed to physical build with the modules to create theoverall robotic system. Further, this became theinspiration to create other user-friendly modular roboticsystems such as the music cubes, MusicTiles
MagicCubes, modular interactive tiles [7], and Mototiles (www.mototiles.com).
3. Disrupting the Industrial Robot SectorFig. 2. A robot orchestra that we developed for the LEGO
Mindstorms promotion tour in Europe in late 1990’s.

Despite of the core research effort in these embodied
artificial intelligence themes, all experiments had theunderlying focus of creating robotic and interactive

Based on these studies of playful robotics as userfriendly interfaces, our students during a decade went
on to form the Universal Robots company to create anindustrial robot arm, which should be light-weight, safe,and easily programmable by anybody.
Indeed, the founder of Universal Robots, EsbenØstergaard reports that “in the mid 90’s, we built robots

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the football World Cup for robots, which was seen by
50 million people. Football robots could be programmed
by children without any technical knowledge, and if
children can learn to program robots, then all people canlearn it. This approach was one of the fundamental
values of our company Universal Robots. We found outthat Danish food companies needed to be able to adaptquickly. It was absolutely impossible to do that with theexisting robots. So we built a robotic arm that could be
reprogrammed easily and without specialist knowledge,
and the idea turned out to be pretty good.” [8]disruption of an industrial sector such as the industrial
robot sector, where the growth now is characterized by
the development and sales of such low-cost, userfriendly robots. The development of such robots wasbased upon the extensive knowledge gained in playfulrobotics, LEGO robots for kids, minimal robot systems,
user-friendly, behavior-based, biomimetic, modularrobotics and intelligent systems.

Fig. 3. Robots from Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots.

4.

Fig. 2. One of the Universal Robots industrial robot arms.

Indeed, Universal Robots created such robotic arms,
which suddenly made it feasible for SMEs to invest inrobots and automation, since the SMEs could afford therobot arm and could easily adapt the robot arm to newprocesses. This disrupted the industrial robot industry,
the Universal Robots company was sold for 285 million
USD to Teradyne, and most other robot companies hadto follow up to create similar light-weight, safe anduser-friendly robotic arms. A good example is Rodney
Brooks’ Rethink Robotics company and their Baxter
robot. Like the Universal Robots company did, also
Rethink Robotics tries to develop user-friendly robots
that anybody can control by allowing the factory worker
to grab the robot arm and show the robot what to do bymoving it around while the robot learns what to perform
and with which objects.
Further, crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter are
seeing several projects funded to build low-cost tabletop robotic arms for personal use, e.g. for the makermovement and light manufacturing.
In our case, the lessons learned were that long-term
focus on play and user-friendliness can lead toDisrupting the Health Sector

One of the next sectors to experience a similar
disruption may be the health sector. In many areas of
the health sector, patient compliance to the treatment isimportant. This is the case in prevention andrehabilitation, for instance, in which the subject is asked
to perform a certain series of actions at regular intervals.
But unfortunately compliance to the protocol is often
low, due to little intrinsic motivation to perform thoseactions that may be viewed as tedious and repetitive.
Also here, play and playware may disrupt the sector
by providing new technological opportunities thatradically changes the way such practices in prevention
and rehabilitation is performed. Play as a free andvoluntary activity, which is performed for the personalenjoyment, may result in highly motivated patients, if
the technology can mediate such playful engagement.
At the same time, it may be possible to observe thecollateral effects of play in the form of quantifiable
health effects that exceeds the effects measured withtraditional health intervention methods [9].
Therefore, we developed modular playware in theform of the modular interactive tiles called Moto tiles(www.mototiles.com). The Moto tiles activates the user
to perform playful interaction with play and games on
the tiles that light up in different colors and registers
when users step on them. The Moto tiles are connected

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Henrik Hautop Lund

to a tablet with the ANT+ radio protocol. On the tablet,the user can select between numerous games thatchallenge both the physical and cognitive abilities of theuser. Further, the tablet shows the score in each games,shows statistics for the user, and make automatic
documentation of effect.
Scientific studies of effect among communitydwelling elderly who perform group play on themodular tiles once per week show highly statisticalsignificant effect on functional abilities of the elderly.
Especially, the balancing abilities of the elderly (avg. 83
years of age) increase by more than 60% after merely 13
training sessions [10]. Also, all other measured
functional abilities (strength, mobility, agility, andendurance of the elderly) improved with statisticalsignificant effect.
Qualitative studies suggest that the high health effectfrom playing with the Moto tiles arises from the factthat the Moto tiles act as a play force, which pushes theparticipants into a play-dynamics, in which they forget
about time and place, and thereby perform more thanthey would normally do. In play, they may forget about
their fears of falling and forget about their perceived
physical and cognitive limitations.

Fig. 4. The Moto tiles and the tablet interface.

With such quantifiable health effect results of play, webelieve that playware technology may disrupt certain
areas of the health sector. Already, the Moto tiles areused in the health sector for the benefit of cardiac
patients, stroke patients, elderly citizens at risk offalling, dementia patients, children with cerebral palsy,
and in special schools in three continents. As is the casewith the disruptive technology for the industrial robot
sector, also this disruptive technology for the healthsector is based on the possibility for the end-user toeasily adapt to different tasks and practices, e.g. fordifferent kinds of patients.
5. Discussion and Conclusion
The developments of disruptive technologies are basedon the Playware ABC concept. The Playware ABC
concept focusses on the development of technology to
be used by anybody, anywhere, anytime based onbuilding bodies and brains, and thereby facilitating thatusers can construct, combine and create. Indeed, thepossibility for anybody to create new interactions withthe systems seem to provide new opportunities, as isshowcased in the industrial robot sector and healthsector. At the same time, the concept leads to solutions
that are cheaper, safer and more flexible than previous
solutions in the sectors.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank colleagues at the Center
for Playware, Technical University of Denmark.
References
1. J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens. (1938) (Homo Ludens.
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3. C. Jessen and H. H. Lund. On play forces, play dynamics,and playware. Unpublished manuscript.
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