RopePlus: bridging distances with social and kinesthetic rope games

Rope-based games such as jump rope, tug-of-war, and kite-flying promote physical activity and social interaction among people of all ages and especially in children during the development of their coordination skills and physical fitness. Our RopePlus system builds on those traditional games by enabling players to participate remotely through interacting with ropes that connect physical and virtual spaces. The RopePlus platform is centered around the rope as a tangible interface with various hardware extensions to allow for multiple playing modes. In this paper, we present two games that have been implemented in detail: a kite-flying game called Multi-Fly and a jump-rope game called Multi-Jump. Our work aims to expand tangible interface gaming to real time social playing environments.