TOY SYSTEMS AND POSITION SYSTEMS

• US 20130065482A1
• Filed: 11/03/2010
• Published: 03/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/12/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Liberation Consulting Limited
• Original Assignee: Liberation Consulting Limited
• Inventors: Trickett, Alastair
• Granted Patent: US 11,559,751 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 446/397
• CPC Class Codes: A63H 11/00 Self-movable toy figures
• CPC Class Codes: A63H 18/16 Control of vehicle drives by interaction between vehicle and track; Control of track elements by vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: A63H 2200/00 Computerized interactive toys, e.g. dolls

Abstract

A toy system comprises a surface (1) provided with position encoding information; and a toy (2, 20) arranged to be movable across the surface (1), said toy (2, 20) comprising at least one sensor (4) for reading said position encoding information, and processing means (3) arranged to process the position encoding information read by the sensor (4) and to determine the position of the toy (2, 20) on said surface (1) on the basis of said position encoding information.

Claims

1. A toy system comprising:

a surface provided with position encoding information; and

a toy arranged to be movable across the surface, said toy comprising at least one sensor for reading said position encoding information, and processing means arranged to process the position encoding information read by the sensor and to determine the position of the toy on said surface on the basis of said position encoding information, wherein said toy has at least one mode of operation in which said processing means is arranged to capture the path of the toy with respect to the surface as it is moved arbitrarily about the surface by a user.

2. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said processing means is arranged to determine any or all of the following:

a) the speed of the toy across the surface;

b) the orientation of the toy with respect to the surface;

c) the path of the toy across the surface;

or

d) the distance of the toy from, or the direction of the toy towards, another toy or an object on or element in the surface.

3. A toy system as claimed in claim 1 or 2, wherein the toy is not physically connected to the surface, or wherein there is no electrical connection between the toy and the surface.

4. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the toy is movable in an unrestricted manner in any direction with respect to the surface.

5. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising recording means arranged to record at least one activity-recording which records the path and/or speed and/or orientation of the toy with respect to the surface.

6. A toy system as claimed in claim 5, wherein the toy has at least one movable appendage and/or sound recording means, and wherein said activity-recording also records movement of said appendage and/or sound recorded into said sound recording means.

7. A toy system as claimed in claim 5, wherein the processing means is arranged to generate at least one play-sequence from the or each activity recording, and to cause the toy to enact said play-sequence, wherein said play-sequence either:

a) reproduces the actions recorded in the activity-recording; and

/or

b) modifies the actions recorded in the activity-recording.

8. A toy system as claimed in claim 5, wherein said recording means is also arranged to record context-data associated with the activity-recording, said context data comprising data relating to any or all of the following:

a) the starting position and/or orientation of the toy;

b) movements or function activations of the toy;

c) data about the location or movement of the toy in relation to features of the surface or its environment or other toys or passive-accessories; and

/or

d) data about the disposition, location, movements, or function activations of other toys or passive-accessories.

9. A toy system as claimed in claim 7, wherein said recording means is also arranged to record context-data associated with the activity-recording, said context data comprising data relating to any or all of the following:

a) the starting position and/or orientation of the toy;

b) movements or function activations of the toy;

c) data about the location or movement of the toy in relation to features of the surface or its environment or other toys or passive-accessories; and

/or

d) data about the disposition, location movements, or function activations of other toys or passive-accessories,

and further wherein said processing means uses said context-data in the generation of said play-sequence and/or the generation of context-data for said play-sequence.

10. A toy system as claimed in claim 8, wherein said processing means is arranged to analyse one or more activity recordings and associated context-data and thereby generate play-sequences with associated context-data, in such a way that the relationship between the activity-recording or activity-recordings and the play-sequence or play-sequences is one-to-one, many-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many.

11. A toy system as claimed in claim 8, wherein said processing means is arranged to direct the toy to act autonomously in pursuit of a game or activity by automatically selecting play-sequences for replay according to the existence of a relationship between the context-data of the selected play-sequence and the current context of the toy relative to the game or application.

12. A toy system as claimed in claim 7, which comprises more than one such toy.

13. A toy system as claimed in claim 12, wherein said processing means of each toy ensures that a toy takes avoiding action if the play-sequence of another toy would result in a collision between the two toys.

14. A toy system as claimed in claim 12, which comprises first and second such toys, and wherein the toy system has a training mode during which the first toy operates in a passive mode in which it is free to be moved by a user, and the second toy operates in an active mode in which it moves under its own power.

15. A toy system as claimed in claim 12, wherein each of said toys has an attack-map and defence-map lookup table in which response play-sequences are stored for different positions and states of the other toy.

16. A toy system as claimed in claim 12, in which said toys are arranged to compete with each other.

17. A toy system as claimed in claim 1 which further comprises communication means arranged to communicate with another toy and/or a computer, including via the internet, in order to allow a user of the toy to control the movements, actions and/or speech of a further real or virtual toy.

18. A toy system as claimed in any preceding claim, further comprising at least one indicator which represents an emotional state of said toy.

19. A toy system as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein said surface is a substantially flat surface.

20. A toy system as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 18, wherein said surface comprises at least one protrusion.

21. A toy system as claimed in claim 20, wherein said position encoding information extends, at least partially, onto the surface of said protrusion.

22. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said surface is divided into areas, each area having an associated information content, and wherein the toy is provided with audio and/or visual output means arranged to output the information content associated with each area when said sensor is moved over the corresponding area.

23. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said toy comprises at least one wheel, ball or other friction-reducing device for enabling the toy to travel across the surface.

24. A toy system as claimed in claim 1, which is provided with:

a) a passive mode in which the toy is free to be pushed around on the surface by a user; and

b) an active mode in which the toy moves across the surface under its own power.

25. A toy system as claimed in any preceding claim, wherein the toy further comprises detachable accessories.

26. A method of operating a toy system as claimed in any preceding claim, the method comprising moving the toy across the surface, reading said position encoding information using said sensor, and processing said position encoding information to determine the position of the toy on the surface, wherein in at least one mode of operation of the toy the processing means of the toy captures the path of the toy with respect to the surface as the toy is moved arbitrarily about the surface by a user.

27. A method of encoding absolute (as opposed to relative) position in one or more dimensions in a manner that can be decoded by a single-point sensor, the method including:

a) providing linear elements arranged in parallel with each element encoding a symbol value; and

b) providing one or more sets of said linear elements each encoding a windowing sequence that is usable to decode the position of a sensor along an axis perpendicular to said linear elements.

28. A method as claimed in claim 27, further comprising, if more than one set of linear elements is used to encode additional dimensions, then providing means to distinguish and separately decode each set.

29. A method of recovering the path and/or position of a sensor when the sensor reverses or bit-jumps or bit-errors are encountered, said method including:

a) a method of recording the most likely paths to each potential position the sensor could be in (only required if the path needs to be recovered); and

b) a method of scoring the likelihood of each such path.

30. A method of setting starting layer width and initial score handicaps in order to handle uncertainty in the last-good-position.

31. A method of layer trimming to reduce processing and storage requirements during recovery.

32. A method of recovering from recovery tree overflow by backtracking along the most likely paths to the point they converge.

33. A method of confirming when the sensor has moved out of the position-encoding area by using border symbols that are sensible when illuminated by either energy-source.

34. An autonomous-mode method for rotary position acquisition

35. An autonomous-mode method for tracking position by calculating sensor-direction from the motor-speeds and orientation of the movable object, the method including the use of Parallel sensor-direction when sensor-direction is uncertain and taking account of errors in the sensor-position.

36. A method for handling autonomous-mode events by using Parallel scoring.

37. A method of encoding orientation by including orientation symbols—

either by interspersing orientation symbol groups among the symbol-lines, or by including an orientation line on one side of the symbol-line.

38. A method of determining sensor direction by measuring the length of the space between dissimilar symbols.