Inspiration From Games and Entertainment Artifacts: A Rising Paradigm for Designing Mechanisms and Algorithms in Robotics

Games and toys have been serving as entertainment tools to humans for a long period of time. While except for entertainment, they can also trigger inspiration and enhance productivity in many other domains such as healthcare and general workplaces. The concept of the game is referred to a series of structured procedures (e.g., card games) and virtual programs. The entertainment artifacts could be a toy or even a handicraft, such as origami and kirigami, for entertainment purposes in a broader sense. Recently, the design of robots and relevant applications in robotics has been emerging in taking inspiration from Games and Entertainment Artifacts (GEA). However, there is a lack of systematic and general process for implementing a GEA-inspired design for developing robot-related applications. In this article, we put forward a design paradigm based on the inspiration of game and entertainment artifacts which is a systematic design approach. The design paradigm could follow two different processes which are driven by problems and solutions, respectively, using analogies of games and entertainment artifacts to build robotic solutions for solving real problems. The problem-driven process starts with an existing real-world problem, which follows the sequences of robotics problem search, robotics problem identification, GEA solution search, GEA solution identification, GEA principle extraction, and the principle implementation. Reversely, the solution-driven process follows the sequence of GEA solution search, GEA solution identification, GEA principle extraction, robotics problem search, robotics problem identification, and principle implementation. We demonstrate the application of the design paradigm using the case study of a new type of reconfigurable floor cleaning robot and its path planning algorithm.