article - Philips Research

Feature lifestyle Feature lifestyle
Making electronic
games more sociable
Philips unveils the Entertaible – a 21 st century tabletop gaming platform that
marries the best of electronic and traditional board games in a natural and
simple way. Sitting comfortably around the game table, people can enjoy both
the shared experience of playing together and the excitement of being able to
directly interact with an electronic game.
By Andrew Woolls-King
Photography Michel Klop
“We wanted to see if we could make electronics games more sociable by using our
knowledge of displays and user interaction in a new way,” recalls Tom Bergman.
“Although the project initially started as a fun experiment on the side, as the concept grew,
so did our enthusiasm and the amount of obvious fun we were having. This attracted the
attention of more and more fellow research colleagues, as well as our management.”
“ The Entertaible could be used to invent brand new games
offering unprecedented levels of user interaction – games
that would never become predictable or ever quite ‘feel’
the same twice, however often you played them. ”
Tom Bergman, Philips Research
Tom Bergman, a principal scientist within the Visual Experiences group of Philips Research in
Eindhoven, the Netherlands, is talking about what is now known as the Philips ‘Entertaible’.
This was recently demonstrated as a fully functioning working concept at the Consumer
Electronics Show (CES2006) in Las Vegas, USA, and subsequently made the front cover of
ElectronicsWeekly (11th January 2006 issue).
In the Entertaible, the features of computer gaming – such as dynamic playing fi elds and gaming
levels – have been combined with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces – such
as pawns and dies – of traditional board games. In this sense, the Entertaible can be regarded
as a 21st century equivalent of the traditional board game. In reality, however, it is much more
than that.
“The Entertaible’s capabilities could not only breathe new interactive life into multi-player
board and electronic games, but also support new game and accessory classes,” says
Bergman. “These may include, for example, using a portion of the touchscreen to allow
private tactical information to be shown to specifi c players only.”
Entertaible comprises a 30-inch tabletop-mounted LCD, sophisticated touchscreen-based
multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics. The current prototype
is based on a PC platform, but any gaming platform would be suitable to drive the Entertaible.
“The concept of a multi-user, digitally interactive table is not new and other companies have
developed comparable products that offer this kind of functionality,” explains
Gerard Hollemans, a senior research scientist for User Interaction in the Media
Interaction group at Eindhoven. Hollemans was involved with the development of
Entertaible from an early stage and leads the research project team.
“Where the Entertaible does uniquely differ, however, is in its simplicity.” Other approaches,
for instance, have utilized complex arrangements of overhead cameras and dimmed lighting
that detract from the user experience. In contrast, the Entertaible is based on a series of
infrared LEDs and photodiodes discretely mounted around the perimeter of a
24 Philips Research Password 26 l February 2006 Philips Research Password 26 25
l February 2006