HoverBall
Kei Nitta, Keita Higuchi, Jun Rekimoto · 2014
Balls are the most popular equipment for sports. To play with balls, certain physical methods, or "vocabularies," such as throwing, hitting, spinning, or kicking have been developed by reflecting the fact that balls obey physical dynamics. This feature forms the foundation of ball-based sports; however, we consider that it limits the possibility of such sports. For instance, the speed of balls could be considerably fast for small children, senior people, or people with physical disabilities. In this paper, we propose a flying ball based on quadcopter technology. This ball has the ability hover and to change its location and behavior based on the context of the sport or game. With this technology, the physical dynamics of a ball can be re-programmed by sports designers, and new ball-playing vocabularies, such as hovering, anti-gravity, proximity, or remote manipulation, can be introduced to extend the method in which people interact with balls. In this paper, we introduce this concept as a method of augmenting sports, and present our initial flying ball system that consists of a grid shell that comprises a micro quadcopter, and demonstrates new sports interactions with the ball.