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Metazoa Ludens: Mixed-Reality Interaction and Play for Small Pets and Humans
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Although animals and pets are so important for families and society, in modern urban lifestyles, we can only spend little time with our animal friends. Interactive media should be aimed to enhance not only human-to-human communication but also human-to-animal communication. Thus, we promote a new type of interspecies media interaction which allows human users to interact and play with their small pet friends (in this case, hamsters) remotely via the Internet through a mixed-reality-based game system “Metazoa Ludens.” We used a two-pronged approach to scientifically examine the system. First, and most importantly, the body condition score study was conducted to evaluate the positive effects to the hamsters. Second, the method of Duncan was used to assess the strength of preference of the hamsters toward Metazoa Ludens. Lastly, the effectiveness of this remote interaction with respect to the human users as an interactive gaming system with their pets/friends (hamster) was examined based on Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory. Results of both studies inform of positive remote interaction between human users and their pet friends using our research system. This research is not only just aimed at providing specific experimental results on the implemented research system but is also aimed as a wider lesson for human-to-animal interactive media. Therefore, as an addition, we present a detailed framework suited in general for human-to-animal interaction systems inferred from the lessons learned.
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... 46% of the papers are published within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), with signifcant contributions from the the ACI and CHI conferences accounting respectively for 40% and 14% of ACM-related papers. Other key ACM conferences include the Conference on Advance Computer Entertainment (ACE) (23 papers), the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS) (24), and the ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) (15). ...
... With only a minority of systems that provide feedback to animals, researchers had to develop alternative evaluation approaches for participants who cannot clearly express preferences or provide direct feedback about their experience. For instance, Cheok et al.'s [24] evaluation methodology combined voluntary engagement patterns and health metrics to assess their mixed-reality system's impact on hamsters, demonstrating how multiple indirect measures could provide robust evidence of user experience. Similarly, Mancini et al.'s [100] semiotic framework analyzed how dogs interpreted tracking devices through their contextualized behaviors, ofering insights into how users make sense of technology through natural interactions. ...
Animals living alongside humans are navigating a world increasingly filled with technology, yet little is known about how they interface with these systems, whether designed for, with, or around them. Anchored in HCI and ranging across diverse fields, this scoping review analyzes nearly 800 research works to explore the diverse realities of animal-technology research, examining the who, what, why, and how of animal-technology entanglements. Our analysis revealed 11 research objectives and eight types of technologies across six animal contexts. By categorizing the literature based on authors’ aims and intended beneficiaries, we highlight trends, gaps, and ethical considerations. We find that most systems involve animals with limited potential for direct engagement or sense-making. We propose a framework to understand animals as users versus subjects of interactive systems, focusing on feedback, empirical testing, and projected animal benefits. Our findings offer a foundation to understand current and future animal technology research and the diversity of animal user experience.
... In the game of hide-and-seek, rats alternated between a hider and seeker role competing against humans (Reinhold et al., 2019;Bagi et al., 2022). and it has been claimed domestic hamsters (Rodentia: Cricetidae: Cricetinae, species not specified) adopt a 'chaser' role in a maze navigation game with humans (Tan et al., 2007;Cheok et al., 2011) even though rodents are natural prey species. Beyond competition and collaboration, other types of roles adopted by animals in games lack study. ...
... In ACI, both terms 'interaction' and 'user' are utilized in a broad sense, including whether the user interacts with the system actively and intentionally (Robinson et al., 2014), actively and unintentionally (Mancini et al., 2015), passively and deliberately (Cheok et al., 2011) or passively and unintentionally (Mancini et al., 2012). In interaction design, it is given high priority that the needs and preferences of users should be considered during the development of technology to enable the creation of more usable systems and better user experience (Preece et al., 2015). ...
In the last ten years, wearable technologies for animals have become increasingly popular, and activity monitoring systems are one of the most commonly used types of technology. However, there is a limited amount of research on dog activity monitoring systems and their impact on the lives of caretakers and their awareness, despite the growing number of studies on wearable technologies for humans. This thesis aims to fill this gap by conducting a longitudinal study with 30 participants, exploring the dimensions of interaction with dog activity monitoring systems, caretaker personas related to the use of these systems, and their potential to contribute to the caregiving of dogs. The study involves participants using a specific dog activity monitoring device for six weeks, along with in-depth interviews, experience sampling method, and complementary questionnaires. The findings are used to develop the Dog Activity Monitoring Systems-mediated stage-based awareness model that explains how dog activity systems can mediate the human-dog relationship and support the caregiving of dogs.
... For orangutans, Cheok and his colleagues have created mixed-reality games and systems that let them engage in virtual interactions with humans, other animals, and objects. According to their research, mixed-reality interaction can be a useful tool for fostering social contact between people and animals, cognitive enrichment for animals, and chances for fun learning [16]. ...
... On top of this, MobiliMB presented a 5-degree-offreedom mechanical device to be installed at the bottom of the phone, giving the user limited force feedback of a virtual pet [24]. Metazoa Ludens allowed users to play with their pets together remotely in a mixed reality environment [25]. ...
Virtual agents are artificial intelligence systems that can interact with users in virtual reality (VR), providing users with companionship and entertainment. Virtual pets have become the most popular virtual agents due to their many benefits. However, haptic interaction with virtual pets involves two challenges: the rapid construction of various haptic proxies, and the design of agent-initiated active interaction. In this paper, we propose a modular haptic agent (MHA) prototype system, enabling the tactile simulation and encountered-type haptic interaction of common virtual pet agents through a modular design method and a haptic mapping method. Meanwhile, the MHA system with haptic interaction is actively initiated by the agents according to the user’s intention, which makes the virtual agents appear more autonomous and provides a better experience of human–agent interaction. Finally, we conduct three user studies to demonstrate that the MHA system has more advantages in terms of realism, interactivity, attraction, and raising user emotions. Overall, MHA is a system that can build multiple companion agents, provide active interaction and has the potential to quickly build diverse haptic agents for an intelligent and comfortable virtual world.
Urban chicken‐keeping is on the rise in London, in private gardens, community gardens, allotments, schools, and urban farm projects. In welcoming chickens into the city, urban spaces are being transformed: coops are being built, runs constructed, chicken‐friendly flora introduced, and space landscaped to accommodate both chickens and humans. Underneath the design of these multispecies urban spaces, there is a desire to bring the good life into the city, through a return to nature. Chicken‐keeping is being lauded by urban keepers and commentators alike as a response to urban crises over food provenance and quality, environmental ethics, and a growing unease with industrial agriculture. However, after chickens arrive in these urban spaces, it becomes quickly apparent that the design of the urban barnyard imposed by the human is rarely practical for, or enjoyed by, chickens: perfectly laid lawns are torn up, plants are demolished, and vegetable patches are gorged on, and chickens are at the mercy of local foxes. When chickens enter these urban barnyards, they demand humans pay attention to their desires, behaviours, and territoriality by overflowing and expanding their assigned space. As such, designing the urban barnyard is an ongoing spatio‐temporal iterative process between chickens, humans, and other non‐human actors in the more‐than‐human city. In this paper, using the case of the urban chicken, I argue that more‐than‐human (urban) geographies can find generative collaborations with design thinking in theorising human–environmental relationalities.
Human Pacman is a novel interactive entertainment system that ventures to embed the natural physical world seamlessly with a fantasy virtual playground by capitalizing on mobile computing, wireless LAN, ubiquitous computing, and motion-tracking technologies. Our human Pacman research is a physical role-playing augmented-reality computer fantasy together with real human–social and mobile gaming. It emphasizes collaboration and competition between players in a wide outdoor physical area which allows natural wide-area human–physical movements. Pacmen and Ghosts are now real human players in the real world, experiencing mixed computer graphics fantasy–reality provided by using the wearable computers. Virtual cookies and actual tangible physical objects are incorporated into the game play to provide novel experiences of seamless transitions between real and virtual worlds. We believe human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.
This chapter details the Human Pacman system to illuminate entertainment computing which ventures to embed the natural physical world seamlessly with a fantasy virtual playground by capitalizing on infrastructure provided by mobile computing, wireless LAN, and ubiquitous computing. With Human Pacman, we have a physical role-playing computer fantasy together with real human-social and mobile-gaming that emphasizes on collaboration and competition between players in a wide outdoor physical area that allows natural wide-area human-physical movements. Pacmen and Ghosts are now real human players in the real world experiencing mixed computer graphics fantasy-reality provided by using the wearable computers on them. Virtual cookies and actual tangible physical objects are incorporated into the game play to provide novel experiences of seamless transitions between the real and virtual worlds. This is an example of a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.
Computer-mediated communication (CMC) raises anew traditional questions of truth and trust. Challenges to communicating with truth and trust are exacerbated by qualities of CMC which encourage users to communicate mindlessly, particularly its capacity to evoke a sense of being present to an Other, despite different locations in time or space. Rhetorical presence and dialogic presentness are used to explore the communication dynamics of CMC and delineate some of the challenges of truthful and trustworthy CMC.