Dentsu London, a design shop, is working on a project called Suwappu, which might spell the future of human-robot interoperability. Suwappu is a prototype of an augmented-reality toy system comprising little figurines.
Suwappu Lineup
These little toys interact with humans through augmented reality. It is the same as interacting with computers in a mutually comfortable and easy way.
The tiny blocky figurines that dwell in their own virtual space is an attempt at finding a solution to the issues of artificial intelligence and robotics, which mainly comprises identifying common perceptions of humans and computers in areas such as visibility and audibility. Suwappu has an app, which “reads” the little toys’ color patterns and faces just like humans do and this feature gives a new meaning to augmented reality play.
Interacting with machines is becoming increasingly important as smarter machines are being introduced in to our world. Although Dentsu's Suwappu is at the design stage, they are a major step forward for human-robot interoperability. Humans try to figure out their character from the endearing faces and color patterns of the figures. At the same time, computers look at their vulnerability to processing. The figures probably suggest that machines and humans have a visual vocabulary in common, something like a common machine-human graphical language.