Ixi-Play was an advanced robotic companion that aimed to offer social and interactive gameplay and education for children. It had the ability to see, hear, feel, move, speak, dance and express lifelike emotions. Ixi-Play was developed by the Dutch social robotics company WittyWorX between the years 2012 to 2015.
I designed and tested a series of Ixi-Play's behaviours with the aim to stimulate open-ended gameplay for children (ages 4 - 6). The behaviours that were designed were: Excitement, Happiness, Love, Boredom, Sadness, Fear, Frustration and Grudge and together formed a network of behaviours that were interconnected with one another. In order to translate these accurately into the behaviours of Ixi-Play, the emotions were initially enacted in person, captured and translated into frequency graphs with reference to eye activity, sounds, and physical expressions. The graphs were used as a basis for designing the behaviours of Ixi-Play, each consisting of eye animations, sounds and body movements.
This network of behaviours was designed with the hypothesis that various gameplay models (cooperative vs. competitive) would form naturally based on the user groups' interactions, intentions and their relationship with Ixi-Play.
