pitARa

Preface

pitARa is a tangible-based toolkit for fostering growing children's developmental needs. The development of children is dependent on various aspects like food, environment, teachers, and surroundings. Toys play an essential role in this aspect as children spend a reasonable amount of time with their toys. Research in the past also suggests that toys help develop real-life skills like problem-solving at a very young age, which helps in later life to exceed in different areas. In STEM-specific subjects, toolkits based on tangible user interfaces were demonstrated to teach maths, physics, and the concept of molecular chemistry that helps children visualize what they study, allowing them to retain the knowledge for a more extended period. Our goal through pitARa is to provide evolvable toys to the community that has the freedom to change its affordances according to the child's age or need. In general, the toys provided in the market come with OTA updates to offer new software packages that could bring one or two new games, but the overall experience remains the same. Through pitARa, we wanted to extend this freedom to the shape of our tangible object. To realize shape-changing tangible, we created an atomic unit with 6 I/O capability that we named pitARa cube. This cube is designed with the goal that it could fit inside various skins, changing its outer shape and affordance. We created three skins first one is a ball, the second is a dinosaur and the third one is a spaceship.  

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