Life-size Board Game “Human SUGOROKU”

To Teach Children about Vegetation Succession

Application of Human Sensing Technology to Embodied Education

Ryuichi Yoshida

, Takayuki Adachi

, Keita Muratsu

2,3

, Hiroshi Mizoguchi

, Fusako Kusunoki

Miki Namatame

, Masanori Sugimoto

, Etsuji Yamaguchi

, Shigenori Inagaki

and Yoshiaki Takeda

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, 2641 Yamazaki, Noda-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan

Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan

Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Kobe University, Hyogo, Japan

Department of Computing, Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan

Tsukuba University of Technology, Ibaraki, Japan

Hokkaidou University, Hokkaidou, Japan

Keywords: Interactive Content, Ultrasonic Sensor, Embodiment, Learning Support System.

Abstract: In this paper, we propose and develop a full-body interaction system and simulation game called “Human

SUGOROKU,” which helps elementary school students learn about vegetation succession while having fun.

We found that the students became more involved in the game because they were required to play it using

their body movements. An experiment conducted with students verified that the participants became

immersed in the virtual world of vegetation succession while playing Human SUGOROKU. This paper

describes the structure of our game and the results of its evaluation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Elementary school students often have difficulty in

understanding environmental issues because they

cannot easily experience the relevant knowledge that

they gain in school. In light of this, we aim to

collaborate with elementary schools to effectively

educate students regarding environmental problems.

In previous research, we developed a simulated

tablet game, based on the Digital SUGOROKU

board game, involving vegetation succession

(Toshizaki Matsumura, 2010; Akiko Deguchi, 2010;

Akiko Deguchi, 2009). Vegetation succession is the

observed process of change in the plant life in an

ecosystem, such as the kinds of trees and plants

found in mountains and their patterns of distribution

in the last several thousand years. Vegetation

succession is a crucial concept for the conservation

of mountains. The word “SUGOROKU” means

“board game” in Japanese. Multiple players can

participate in a game of Digital SUGOROKU. The

board is divided into grids, and each player moves a

piece on it. Players move their pieces on the grid

according to event cards, with the aim of securing

the most advanced piece. In our game, a piece

corresponded to a plant and grids corresponded to its

succession phases. In other words, the children

played the role of plants in the simulation.

Experiments revealed that our game effectively

stimulated interest among students and helped them

learn (Toshizaki Matsumura, 2010; Akiko Deguchi,

2010; Akiko Deguchi, 2009).

However, one drawback of the game was that it

was digital and, hence, was played on a computer

screen. We found that the virtual world did not

suitably approximate to the real world. Our

experimental evaluations suggested that rendering

the virtual world more immersive would not only

further motivate the students, but would also

enhance their understanding. In order to evoke

greater interest in the digital game among students,

we focus on implementing operations through

players’ body movements. Accordingly, we have

developed a new learning support system called

“Human SUGOROKU” (Figure 1) (Tomohiro

Nakayama, 2014). The original tablet game uses a

touch panel interface, and players move pieces using

a mouse or a touch pen. By contrast, in order to

make Human SUGOROKU more interesting, we

replaced the touch panel interface with a full-body

295

Yoshida R., Adachi T., Muratsu K., Mizoguchi H., Kusunoki F., Namatame M., Sugimoto M., Yamaguchi E., Inagaki S. and Takeda Y..

Life-size Board Game “Human SUGOROKU” To Teach Children about Vegetation Succession - Application of Human Sensing Technology to Embodied

Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0005476202950300

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 295-300

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

interaction interface developed by combining a

human detector interface, which measures each

player’s movement, with the game’s digital core. In

Human SUGOROKU, the students move on a life-

size board.

In this paper, we determine whether Human

SUGOROKU caused participants to be immersed in

the virtual world of vegetation succession. Unlike

Nakayama et al., who gathered data by interviewing

players once they had played Human SUGOROKU,

we tracked participants’ states in real time to

determine whether they were immersed in the

system, and analyzed their remarks while playing

Human SUGOROKU. In this paper, we describe the

structure of Human SUGOROKU as well as the

evaluation experiment.

2 HUMAN SUGOROKU

2.1 Structure

In Human SUGOROKU, players operate as pieces

by moving on a replica of the SUGOROKU board

drawn on the floor. In order to implement this

operation, technologies that can measure a player’s

position and identify the players in the room are

needed. The technology to calculate a player’s three-

dimensional (3D) position through attached

ultrasonic sensors has already been developed

(Yoshifumi Nishida, 2003; Akifumi Nishitani, 2005).

Accordingly, we used ultrasonic sensors as our

human detector interface.

Figure 2 shows the structure of Human

SUGOROKU. The system is composed of ultrasonic

sensors, two computers, and a projector. Receivers

are placed on the ceiling and transmitters are

attached to the players moving on the grid drawn on

the floor. The digital game core runs on a computer

and is shown on a projector, so that players can

visually absorb the state of the game. A server is

connected to the ultrasonic sensors, which calculate

players’ 3D position information and send it over the

network. Another client computer runs the digital

game.

2.2 Digital Game Core

The digital game core is written in ActionScript

CS5.5, and the game simulates the forested area of

Mt. Rokko in Japan. Figure 3 shows a screenshot of

the game. The plant pieces represent the

characteristic plants that grow on Mt. Rokko.

Figure 1: Human SUGOROKU full-body interaction

system.

Figure 2: Structure of Human SUGOROKU.

Figure 3: Screenshot of digital game.

The surrounding part is the grid area. The event

cards either disrupt or promote plant growth. The

cards are turned over by operating the keyboard, and

the pieces accordingly move on the grid. A

visualization window represents vegetation

succession according to the progression of the game.

In the digital game, there are six types of plant

pieces: Rubus Microphyllus, Mallotus Japonicas,

Quercus Serrata, Pinus Densiflora, Castanopsis, and

Llex Pedunculosa. These plants have varying growth

rates and sizes. Rubus Microphyllus and Mallotus

Japonicas are rapidly growing small plants, Quercus

Serrate and Pinus Densiflora are medium-size plants

that grow at a moderate rate, and Castanopsis and

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Llex Pedunculosa are slow-growing tall plants.

There are six types of event cards: sunny, rainy, wild

boar, insects, landslides, and felling. The extent of a

disturbance depends on the characteristics of each

event card and affects plant breeding. The sunny and

rainy cards are classified as “no disturbance,” wild

boar and insects are classified as “small

disturbances,” and landslides and felling are classed

as “large disturbances.” For example if no

disturbance occurs, small plants, such as Rubus

Microphyllus, decline and tall plants breed. On the

other hand, if a large disturbance occurs, the forest

shows very little vegetation. Therefore, the number

of rapidly growing plants increases and the number

of slow-growing plants decreases significantly.

Moreover, there is mutual action between plants.

This mutual action occurs when two plants grow in

the same place. For example, if a tall plant and a

small plant grow in the same densely forested area,

the tall plant can obtain the sunlight it needs to grow

but the small plant cannot. Therefore, the number of

small plants will decrease. Players can visually

understand the state of vegetation succession

through the visualization window. Thus, students

playing the game can easily understand the scale and

effect of the disturbances on each species of plant.

Vegetation succession is expressed by the relative

progress of each plant piece.

2.3 Human Detector Interface

Figure 4 shows the system configuration of the

human detector interface. To calculate the position

of the players and identify them in the room, we use

ultrasonic sensors consisting of transmitters,

receivers, and a control unit. The receivers receive

ultrasonic waves emitted from the transmitters,

whereas the control unit calculates the 3D position

of the transmitters using the time difference between

successively received ultrasonic waves from the

same transmitter. Because each transmitter has a

unique identifier associated with it, the ultrasonic

sensors can locate the positions of the players using

the transmitters and identify them. Therefore, by

setting transmitters that correspond to a type of plant

piece in advance, we can understand the type of

plant and the position of the associated learner.

In the tablet game, players use a mouse or a touch

pen. They can move a piece on the grid by dragging

it on the computer screen, and can place a piece on

the grid by releasing it. To make the players’ pieces,

it is necessary not only to measure their position, but

also to determine their situation: whether they are

moving or stationary. The system determines

whether players are standing or sitting based on the

position of their heads.

Figure 4: System configuration of human detector

interface.

Figure 5: Playing Human SUGOROKU.

3 EVALUATION

3.1 Evaluation Method

The purpose of our experiment was to determine

whether the participants were immersed in the

virtual world of vegetation succession while playing

Human SUGOROKU. For this, we recorded

participants’ comments as they played the game and

Life-sizeBoardGame"HumanSUGOROKU"ToTeachChildrenaboutVegetationSuccession-ApplicationofHuman

SensingTechnologytoEmbodiedEducation

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investigated whether these were sufficient to judge

their level of interest. When a participant’s comment

suggested that he/she felt like he/she had completely

become a plant, we concluded that the person was

immersed in the virtual world of vegetation

succession.

The participants were 36 sixth-grade primary

school students (ages 11-12 years) in Japan. The

participants were divided into six groups of six

participants each. The members of each group

played two rounds of Human SUGOROKU. The

first round consisted of nine event cards and the

second of 10. The types of cards that appeared

during the first and the second rounds of play had

previously been decided to ensure that the

participants would experience multiple patterns of

vegetation succession. Many first round event cards

included smaller disturbances, whereas several

second round event cards affected larger

disturbances.

The first and second rounds of play lasted for a total

of 30 minutes. We randomly selected five of the 36

participants and recorded their comments during the

game to serve as our data source. The comments

were recorded using a video camera, and we

collected approximately 30 minutes of sound data

per person.

We first transcribed the recorded comments. Then,

with each event card acting as a unit, we divided the

audio data accordingly, and further divided

participants’ comments in each unit every time there

was a change in the speaker. We classified the

comments into two categories: (1) comments

indicating that the participant was immersed in the

virtual world of vegetation succession, and (2)

comments unrelated to immersion. We then counted

the total number of comments for each category.

A few comments indicated that the participants were

immersed in the game. For instance, a participant

playing the role of Castanopsis said during the

deforestation event, “No, don’t cut me down,” or “It

feels so sad to be cut down!” Examples of comments

unrelated to immersion included an instance when a

participant, who noticed that another participant was

moving to an incorrect square, said, “That’s not the

square (you should be moving to).”

Table 1: Number of comments indicating immersion, and comments unrelated to immersion.

Unit (1

round of play) Unit (2

round of play)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Total

○

8 1 6 2 6 6 6 7 9 3 6 5 4 3 6 15 7 6 5

111

3 3 1 2 2 1 2 1 4 5 1 8 1 3 0 4 0 2 1

○

7 7 5 3 3 6 8 7 3 5 6 0 2 4 0 3 0 4 5

1 1 8 4 2 1 0 2 2 5 4 5 0 2 3 1 5 4 2

○

9 6 6 3 7 4 9 5 10 6 9 8 7 5 7 5 5 5 9

125

4 2 4 2 1 1 2 2 2 4 1 3 1 1 2 4 3 0 2

○

4 5 8 5 0 5 3 10 6 4 6 0 7 7 0 2 8 3 7

0 1 1 0 7 2 2 3 1 3 1 6 0 0 3 1 1 3 1

○

9 7 9 6 5 6 5 12 3 2 6 6 0 3 8 5 0 6 2

100

5 0 1 3 3 2 3 5 0 2 2 2 1 1 1 4 3 1 0

Note: The numbers indicate the number of comments. ○: comments indicating immersion, ×: comments unrelated to

immersion, P1: Participant 1， P2: Participant 2，P3: Participant 3，P4: Participant 4，P5: Participant 5.

Table 2: Comments made by participant P3 regarding an event card.

01 P3 : I want a large disturbance. I want a landslide! Landslide!

02 Other (Castanopsis) : I want a rainy or a sunny day.

03 P3 : So, Castanopsis can move forward when it is rainy or sunny.

04 Other : No landslide, please.

05 Moderator : I’m going to turn over the event card now.

06 Other : Oh no, it’s a landslide! That’s terrible! I have to move back four squares.

07 P3 : This is really interesting.

Note. P3: Participant 3

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Table 3: Comments made by participant P5 regarding a mutual action.

01 Moderator : Next, let’s turn over the event card.

02 P5 : It’s a rainy day!

Other

(Pinus Densiflora)

: Great! I can move forward three squares!

04 P5 : I can’t move much.

05 Other : Just one square?

06 P5 : Yes.

07 Other : One, two, three (counts squares). I’ve really moved ahead.

08 P5 : [Mutual action with Pinus Densiflora occurs.] Wait a minute. Now I have

to move back two squares. You’re the worst!

Note. P5: Participant 5

3.2 Results

Table 1 shows the number of comments that

indicated immersion as well as the number of

comments unrelated to immersion. More than 70%

of the total comments made by P1, P3, P4, and P5

indicated immersion, and more than 60% of the total

comments made by P2 indicated the same.

Table 2 shows P3’s comments relating to an

event card. P3 was hoping for a large disturbance, so

that the plant (Mallotus Japonicus), the role of which

he played, could move forward [01]. At the same

time, the participant playing the role of Castanopsis

was hoping for a sunny day or a rainy day event card,

so that her plant could move forward [02]. When the

event card indicated a landslide, the participant

playing the role of Castanopsis was disappointed as

she had to move back four squares [06], while P3

was happy at being able to move forward [07].

Table 3 shows P5’s comments relating to a mutual

action. When a rainy day event card appeared, the

participant playing the role of Pinus Densiflora was

happy to be able to move forward three

squares [03], while P5 was unhappy at only being

able to move forward by a square [04]. Due to the

movements of each plant, Rubus Microphyllus and

Pinus Densiflora arrived at the same square,

resulting in a mutual action. Consequently, Rubus

Microphyllus had to move back two squares, and

expressed anger toward the player playing Pinus

Densiflora [08].

4 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we proposed and tested a movement-

based “Human SUGOROKU” game designed to

educate students about vegetation succession while

having fun. The results of our evaluation, based on

participants’ comments during the game, indicated

that the participants were thoroughly immersed in

the game. We surmise that there are two reasons for

this result: (1) The participants were able to

experience fondness for the plant they played, since

the participants themselves were the pieces in the

SUGOROKU game. (2) Because the participants

had to move forward or backward according to

whether the plants flourished or decayed,

respectively, they felt as if they were the actual

plants.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was partly supported by the Grants-in-

Aid for Scientific Research (B) (No. 23300303) and

(B) (No. 24300290).

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