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Icat, the Chess Player

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Icat, the Chess Player iCat, the Chess Player Evaluating User Enjoyment in a Pervasive Chess Game André Tiago Abelho Pereira Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores Júri Presidente: Doutor Mário Rui Fonsecas dos Santos Gomes Orientador: Doutora Ana Maria Severino de Almeida e Paiva Vogais: Doutor Carlos António Roque Martinho Doutor Nuno Correia Outubro 2007 Resumo O xadrez é um jogo em que dois oponentes se defrontam frente a frente naquele familiar tabuleiro de 64 quadrados de cores pretas e brancas. O xadrez existe há mais de 1500 anos e sobreviveu a todas as civilizações por onde passou. Durante o desenvolvimento da nossa civilização, o xadrez sempre foi um elemento omnipresente e ao jogá-lo tiramos partido dos muitos benefícios cognitivos que ele nos oferece. Uma das suas variantes, o xadrez computorizado, foi uma das primeiras e mais importantes aplicações da inteligência artificial durante o século XX. O xadrez computorizado melhora o jogo original nalguns aspectos, como por exemplo permitir-nos jogar a qualquer momento contra um adversário de força personalizada. Mas nem tudo no xadrez em computadores é positivo. Ao jogarmos contra um computador não conseguimos ver hesitação ou qualquer emoção no nosso oponente e não temos ao nosso dispor o tabuleiro físico tridimensional a que estamos habituados. Com o objectivo de juntar as vantagens oferecidos pelo xadrez tradicional com as vantagens oferecidas pelo xadrez computorizado recorremos à análise da área de Pervasive Gaming. Esta área consiste em trazer o entretenimento virtual de volta ao mundo real. Podemos utilizar esta área para criar um novo tipo de jogo de xadrez onde misturamos os elementos físicos de um jogo tradicional com os elementos virtuais oferecidos por um jogo de xadrez num computador. Desta maneira conseguimos trazer o xadrez computorizado de volta ao mundo real. Esta tese tem como objectivo analisar se uma experiência de jogo inovadora oferecida por um Pervasive Game de xadrez em que o utilizador joga contra uma personagem sintética com um corpo físico (robô) é mais apreciada pelos utilizadores do que quando estes têm como adversário uma personagem virtual. Para fazer esta avaliação, desenhámos um modelo para jogos de xadrez que utilizem a área de Pervasive Gaming. A partir deste modelo criámos uma aplicação em concreto, a aplicação “iCat, the Chess Player”. Para esta aplicação criámos dois cenários de utilização, um deles com um agente de corpo físico e outro com um agente com o mesmo aspecto mas representado virtualmente num ecrã de computador. Utilizando estes dois cenários fizemos alguns testes preliminares e tirámos conclusões sobre a diferença de satisfação dos utilizadores em cada um. Palavras Chave: Xadrez Computorizado, Xadrez Tradicional, Agente Virtual, Agente Físico, Pervasive Gaming, Satisfação do Utilizador. i ii Abstract Chess is an ancient table-top game in which two opponents battle face-to-face in that familiar black and white 64 square board. For more than 1500 years of history chess has survived every civilization it has touched. There are many positive cognitive effects of chess instructions on today’s students and chess has always been a ubiquitous element during the development of our civilization. One of its heirs, computerized chess, was one of the first artificial intelligence (A.I) research areas and was highly important for the development of A.I. throughout the twentieth-century. Computerized chess outperforms its original game by, for instance, transforming the experience in a one player game by allowing us to play against an opponent of custom strength. On the other hand, in a computerized chess game we cannot see hesitation or any expressed emotion from our opponent and don’t have the controls/representation offered by a physical tridimensional chessboard. In order to take advantage of both computerized chess and traditional chess games we recurred to the emerging field of pervasive gaming. The brief definition of pervasive gaming is to bring computer entertainment back to the real world. By creating a new computerized chess gaming experience that profits by the mix of real and virtual game elements, we can also bring computerized chess back to the real world. This thesis tries to conclude that an innovative pervasive chess gaming experience where the user plays chess against a physically embodied synthetic character, on an electronic chessboard, is more enjoyable than a less pervasive one with a virtually embodied character. To reach this conclusion, we have designed a model for a computerized pervasive chess game and implemented a concrete application that uses that model. With this application we have created two different setups, one with the physical embodiment of the iCat social robot and other with the virtual representation of the same at a computer screen. Using these two different setups we have made some preliminary user tests and pulled out some conclusions about the difference of user enjoyment in both setups. Keywords: Computerized Chess, Pervasive Gaming, Traditional Chess, Embodiment, Virtual Agent, Physical Agent, User Enjoyment. iii iv Acknowledgments In the first place I would like to thank DGT projects for contributing to this research project by providing us with their outstanding DGT electronic chessboard and DGT XL chess clock. With people like Ben Bulsink at DGT projects investing hard at research I believe that in a near future chess technology will have some groundbreaking innovative discoveries in benefit of the chess community. For that I want to reinforce my sincere and deep thanks to DGT projects. I would also like to thanks all the members of the GAIPS group: Thank you, Carlos Martinho for investing your indisputable wisdom at reviewing some parts of my work. João Gonçalves for always being there to help and for introducing iCat to me, we have made a good surgery team when the cat needed us. Thanks to Guilherme Raimundo for your availability to everyone in need and for our enlightening but never-ending discussions. João Dias and Rui Figueiredo for being my next door help. Thank you, Marco Vala for your advices. Thanks Nuno Afonso, Tiago Alves, Rita Simões, Pedro Sequeira, António Brisson, Carolina Torres and Luis Santos for your help. I would like to thank my supervisor Ana Paiva and co-supervisor Rui Prada for letting me go forward with this project as my dissertation and for giving me all the conditions I needed. Without them my life would be different at this time. Thanks to my dear sister Cláudia Pereira and her husband Ricardo Mendes. Finally, I would like to end by giving the most sincere and most special thanks of them all to my girlfriend and partner in this project Iolanda Leite. v vi Contents 1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………1 1.1 Motivation……………………………………………………………………………………………….1 1.2 Objectives……………………………………………………………………………………………….3 1.3 Outline…………………………………………………………………………………………………...4 2 Related Work……………………………………………………………………………………………….5 2.1 Computerized Chess…………………………………………………………………………………..5 2.1.1 Components……………………………………………………………………………………...5 2.1.1.1 Graphical User Interfaces………………………………………………………………..5 2.1.1.2 Tangible User Interfaces…………………………………………………………………6 2.1.1.3 Chess Engines…………………………………………………………………………….8 2.1.1.4 Chess Engines Examples………………………………………………………………11 2.1.2 Chess Playing Systems……………………………………………………………………….13 2.1.2.1 Battle Chess……………………………………………………………………………..13 2.1.2.2 Chessmaster Series…………………………………………………………………….13 2.1.2.3 Fritz………………………………………………………………………………………14 2.1.2.4 Chessbase……………………………………………………………………………….14 2.1.2.5 Enhanced Playing Boards……………………………………………………………...14 2.2 Pervasive Gaming……………………………………………………………………………………15 2.2.1 Computer Augmented Tabletop Games…………………………………………………….15 2.2.1.1 KnightMage………………………………………………………………………………16 2.2.1.2 Smart Playing Cards……………………………………………………………………17 2.2.2 Affective games………………………………………………………………………………..17 2.2.2.1 Leonardo…………………………………………………………………………………18 2.2.2.2 Smart Toys………………………………………………………………………………18 2.2.2.3 SenToy…………………………………………………………………………………..19 2.2.3 Location-aware games………………………………………………………………………..19 2.2.3.1 CityPoker…………………………………………………………………………………20 2.2.4 Augmented reality games……………………………………………………………………..20 2.2.4.1 Augmented Reality Worms……………………………………………………………..21 2.3 Concluding Remarks…………………………………………………………………………………21 3 Conceptual Model……………………………………………………………………………………….23 3.1 Conceptual Model of a Traditional Table Top Chess Game……………………………………..24 vii 3.1.1 Social Domain…………………………………………………………………………………..24 3.1.2 Physical Domain………………………………………………………………………………..25 3.2 Conceptual Model of a Traditional Computerized Chess Game………………………………...25 3.2.1 Virtual Domain………………………………………………………………………………….26 3.3 Conceptual Model of a Pervasive Chess Game…………………………………………………..26 3.3.1 Advantages of the Previous Models…………………………………………………………27 3.3.2 Pervasive Chess Game Model……………………………………………………………….27 3.3.3 Chess Playing Agent / Opponent…………………………………………………………….28 3.3.4 Social Domain………………………………………………………………………………….28 3.3.5 Virtual Domain………………………………………………………………………………….28 3.3.6 Physical Domain……………………………………………………………………………….29 3.4 Concluding Remarks…………………………………………………………………………………29 4 Application……………………………………………………………………………………………….31 4.1 Pervasive Elements………………………………………………………………………………….32 4.1.1 Chess Playing Agent Embodiment…………………………………………………………..32 4.1.1.1 iCat Robot………………………………………………………………………………..32 4.1.2 Chess Tangible User Interface……………………………………………………………….35 4.1.2.1 DGT Electronic
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