Augmented Toy Environments: Shareable Tangible User Interfaces For 
Edutainment 

Steve Hinske Institute for Pervasive Computing ETH Zurich, Switzerland 
steve.hinske@inf.ethz.ch 

Matthias Lampe Institute for Pervasive Computing ETH Zurich, Switzerland 
lampe@inf.ethz.ch 

Playing games has always been an important and essential part of human 
culture. Not only does playing serve the purpose of recreation and amusement; 
it also improves psychomotoric skills, and can often be considered as a common 
ground for socializing. While video games greatly enhance the capabilities of 
game design, thus potentially improving both the entertainment value and 
learning experience of a game (often summarized as edutainment), their 
rather solitary nature of interaction has often been criticized for lacking 
the social benefits of traditional games. Augmented toys and smart toys are 
traditional toys or game pieces that are equipped with sensing technology, 
computing power, and communication capabilities, allowing designers to 
incorporate novel gaming elements previously available only in video games 
into traditional real world objects.