Playing with invisible animals: An interactive system of floor-projected footprints to encourage children’s imagination

Playing is essential for a child’s development, and it has various positive effects. In particular, playing with toys enhances children’s imagination. In recent years, children have been tending to play with smart toys equipped with built-in computers, which present various advantages that leverage their digital characteristics. For example, smart toys can provide augmented reality functionalities through which digital information can be added to physical reality. These characteristics offer an important benefit of stimulating the interest and presence of children. However, wearable devices may be required to realize this. Wearable devices are ineffective when people do not own or cannot wear them. Therefore, we developed a system that stimulates the imagination and interest of children in playing without any wearable devices. Our system projects animal footprints onto the floor, encouraging children to play with invisible animals based on their imagination from the footprints. The footprints respond to the children’s movements. To evaluate the developed system, we conducted several experiments with children. First, we investigated the fundamental effects of the system on elementary school students. Then, we investigated the different effects of various interactions. Our experimental results showed that the developed system encourages the imagination of children while playing.