Extending an assistance robot with the ability to play board games

This paper presents an interactive game system integrated in a mobile robot. Our proposal enables assistant robots to provide cognitive and entertainment games to elders with the aim of improving skills like memory, reflexes, or hand-eye coordination, which are jeopardised in aged people. To gain in user acceptance, the game is virtually recreated by projecting the game board over a table by means of a small projector mounted on the robot. The user can naturally interact with the projected board while him/her movements are detected by the perception system of the robot. To validate the proposed system, a practical case is presented in a laboratory environment.