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Swen E . Gaudl

University of Gothenburg, Applied Information Technology, Faculty Member

Plymouth University, School of Computing, Electronics & Mathematics, Faculty Member

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I am a Senior Lecturer for Interaction Design at the University of Gothenburg and member of the HCI division. Before that, I was an ERA Research Fellow at the MetaMakers Institute which is part of Falmouth University. At the MetaMakers, we work on computational creativity and more specifically on computational creativity for games. As part of that, I am working on different angles such as integration of behaviour into physics-based games or trying to understand the creative process of our game users.

Until 2016, I was a member of the AmonI group working on the extraction and evolution of artificial human behaviour for virtual environments. I am curious to see if there are abstract elements or rules which allow an animate or artificial agent to create the impression of human behaviour.
Supervisors: Alexandra Weilenmann

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Papers by Swen E . Gaudl

Staff perceptions towards virtual reality-motivated treadmill exercise for care home residents: a qualitative feedback study with key stakeholders and follow-up interview with technology developer

BMJ Open, Oct 31, 2023

Staff perceptions towards virtual reality-motivated treadmill exercise for care home residents: a... more

Ragdoll Recovery: Manipulating Virtual Mannequins to Aid Action Sequence Proficiency

2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Mar 1, 2022

In this paper, we present a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype to support the demonstration and pract... more In this paper, we present a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype to support the demonstration and practice of the First Aid recovery position. When someone is unconscious and awaiting medical attention, they are placed in the recovery position to keep their airways clear. The recovery position is a commonly taught action sequence for medical professionals and trained first-aiders across industries. VR is a potential pathway for recovery position training as it can deliver spatial information of a demonstrated action for a subsequent copy. However, due to limits of physical interaction with virtual avatars, the practice of this motor sequence is normally performed in the real world on training partners and body mannequins. This limits remote practice, a key strength of any digital, educational resource. We present Ragdoll Recovery (RR), a VR prototype designed to aid training of the recovery position through avatar demonstration and virtual practice mannequins. Users can view the recovery position sequence by walking around two demonstrator avatars. Observed motor skill sequence can then be practised on a virtual mannequin that uses ragdoll physics for realistic and real-time limb behaviour. RR enables remote access to motor skill training that bridges the gap between knowledge of a demonstrated action sequence and real-world performance. We aim to use this prototype to test the viability of action sequence training within a VR educational space.

Fluidic Games in Cultural Contexts

ICCC, Apr 1, 2017

We introduce fluidic games, a type of casual creator that blends game play and game design. Fluid... more We introduce fluidic games, a type of casual creator that blends game play and game design. Fluidic games have a core of built-in games that anchor a space of design possibilities around them, and encourage players to alternate between playing specific games and playing with the design space. Our Gamika Technology platform supports fluidic games on mobile devices, and we have thus far built three of them. In doing so, we have found that even for simple games, fluidic games require computational creativity support. This takes several forms intended to keep design sessions playful and fast-moving, including automated game design used as a form of brainstorming, mixed-initiative cocreative design to ease design-space navigation, and automated game playing to evaluate game dynamics. Finally, we have exhibited this fluidic-games concept in three distinct cultural settings: a series of rapid game jams lasting 1-2 hours each, an in-progress semesterlong enrichment course with a local school, and an art installation that foregrounds an autonomous version of the system exploring a fluidic game on its own, at least if the audience will allow it to do so.

Mixed-Initiative Approaches to On-Device Mobile Game Design

Playing casual games is a wildly popular activity on smartphones. However, designing casual games... more Playing casual games is a wildly popular activity on smartphones. However, designing casual games is done by a smaller group of people, usually on desktop computers, using professional development tools. Our goal is to bring these activities closer together, in terms of who does them and how they do them. Our Gamika Technology platform is a 2D physics-based mobile game design environment. It comprises a 284dimensional parametric design space, and poses mobile game design as the problem of navigating this space. We have built three mobile apps thus far to experiment with on-device, mixed-initiative navigation of the Gamika design space and some of its subspaces. We describe these apps here in terms of the initiatives that go into making a game with them, and how these are split between people and underlying AI software. Our overall goal is to democratise game design, so that anyone and everyone can make casual games directly on their mobile phones or tablets.

A Parameter-Space Design Methodology for Casual Creators

ICCC, 2018

Casual creators are creativity support tools intended to be fun and easy to use for exploratory c... more Casual creators are creativity support tools intended to be fun and easy to use for exploratory creation. We have built casual creators called fluidic game designers, which support exploratory game design directly on mobile devices. These work by encoding games in a parameterised design space and enabling player/designers to create new games by varying the parameters in a design interface and seeing changes in their design instantly. A question largely unanswered by existing work is how to choose a suitable parameter space. We describe a methodology for specifying and implementing parameterised design spaces for casual creators, a context that requires balancing a large and expressive space against a manageable and fun user interface. This methodology was derived through investigating and generalising how the parameter spaces for three fluidic games were conceived. It suggests an iterative process whereby parameters are sourced in seven different ways, within a dynamic of incremental expansion and contraction of the parameter spaces.

Instinct: A biologically inspired reactive planner for intelligent embedded systems

Cognitive Systems Research, Oct 1, 2019

The Instinct Planner is a new biologically inspired reactive planner, based on an established beh... more The Instinct Planner is a new biologically inspired reactive planner, based on an established behaviour based robotics methodology and its reactive planner component-the POSH planner implementation. It includes several significant enhancements that facilitate plan design and runtime debugging. It has been specifically designed for low power processors and has a tiny memory footprint. Written in C++, it runs efficiently on both Arduino (Atmel AVR) and Microsoft VC++ environments and has been deployed within a low cost maker robot to study AI Transparency. Plans may be authored using a variety of tools including a new visual design language, currently implemented using the Dia drawing package.

Rapid game jams with fluidic games: A user study & design methodology

Entertainment Computing, Aug 1, 2018

We introduce rapid game jams, a style of game jam that takes only 1-2 hours and is focused on des... more We introduce rapid game jams, a style of game jam that takes only 1-2 hours and is focused on design experimentation rather than on programming and technical implementation. To support that kind of rapid game-design experimentation, we have designed a class of games that we call fluidic games. These are mobile games in which the game mechanics and other aspects of the games are editable on the fly, directly on the device, allowing for frequent play/design context shifts. We have conducted four rapid game jams with 105 participants from a local Girlguiding organisation, in order to gain real-world experience with this concept. We analyse results from a survey instrument completed by 69 participants in two of these rapid game jams. In order to guide future work in addressing questions left open by this study, we did a qualitative analysis of the designed games to gain additional insights into participants' design practice.

The Barriers of the Assistive Robotics Market—What Inhibits Health Innovation?

Sensors

Demographic changes are putting the healthcare industry under pressure. However, while other indu... more Demographic changes are putting the healthcare industry under pressure. However, while other industries have been able to automate their operation through robotic and autonomous systems, the healthcare sector is still reluctant to change. What makes robotic innovation in healthcare so difficult? Despite offering more efficient, and consumer-friendly care, the assistive robotics market has lacked penetration. To answer this question, we have broken down the development process, taking a market transformation perspective. By interviewing assistive robotics companies at different business stages from France and the UK, this paper identifies new insight into the main barriers of the assistive robotics market that are inhibiting the sector. Their impact is analysed during the different stages of the development, exploring how these barriers affect the planning, conceptualisation and adoption of these solutions. This research presents a foundation for understanding innovation barriers tha...

Wevva: Democratising Game Design

Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment

Fluidic games blur the line between gameplay and game design, providing playful, non-technical, e... more Fluidic games blur the line between gameplay and game design, providing playful, non-technical, easy-to-use tools for users to design their own games. We introduce Wevva, our first fluidic game for iOS, which allows users to design and share their own games based on novel mechanics, entirely on a mobile device, with no need for programming skills. The development of such software is a significant challenge in user interface design, requiring a new design approach compared to the design of more traditional creative tools, and with much scope for mixed-initiative co-creation and other assistive AI technologies. Our aim with fluidic games is to democratise game design, allowing anyone and everyone to express themselves through the artform of digital games.

Towards Morally Autonomous NPCs: The Case of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

In our work we choose to focus on the study of how an existing CRPG already allows to account for... more In our work we choose to focus on the study of how an existing CRPG already allows to account for NPCs with a certain degree of moral autonomy ---The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Furthermore, we argue how the mechanisms already included in the game could be rearranged and adapted to model NPCs with much more detailed moral profiles

Instinct:a biologically inspired reactive planner for embedded environments

The Instinct Planner is a new biologically inspired reactive planner, based on an established beh... more The Instinct Planner is a new biologically inspired reactive planner, based on an established behaviour based robotics methodology and its reactive planner component-the POSH planner implementation. It includes several significant enhancements that facilitate plan design and runtime debugging. It has been specifically designed for low power processors and has a tiny memory footprint. Written in C++, it runs efficiently on both ARDUINO (ATMEL AVR) and MICROSOFT VC++ environments and has been deployed within a low cost maker robot to study AI Transparency. Plans may be authored using a variety of tools including a promising visual design language, currently implemented using the DIA drawing package.

Ragdoll Recovery: Manipulating Virtual Mannequins to Aid Action Sequence Proficiency

2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW)

In this paper, we present a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype to support the demonstration and pract... more In this paper, we present a Virtual Reality (VR) prototype to support the demonstration and practice of the First Aid recovery position. When someone is unconscious and awaiting medical attention, they are placed in the recovery position to keep their airways clear. The recovery position is a commonly taught action sequence for medical professionals and trained first-aiders across industries. VR is a potential pathway for recovery position training as it can deliver spatial information of a demonstrated action for a subsequent copy. However, due to limits of physical interaction with virtual avatars, the practice of this motor sequence is normally performed in the real world on training partners and body mannequins. This limits remote practice, a key strength of any digital, educational resource. We present Ragdoll Recovery (RR), a VR prototype designed to aid training of the recovery position through avatar demonstration and virtual practice mannequins. Users can view the recovery position sequence by walking around two demonstrator avatars. Observed motor skill sequence can then be practised on a virtual mannequin that uses ragdoll physics for realistic and real-time limb behaviour. RR enables remote access to motor skill training that bridges the gap between knowledge of a demonstrated action sequence and real-world performance. We aim to use this prototype to test the viability of action sequence training within a VR educational space.

Towards Simulated Morality Systems: Role-Playing Games as Artificial Societies

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence, 2019

Computer role-playing games (RPGs) often include a simulated morality system as a core design ele... more Computer role-playing games (RPGs) often include a simulated morality system as a core design element. Games' morality systems can include both god's eye view aspects, in which certain actions are inherently judged by the simulated world to be good or evil, as well as social simulations, in which non-player characters (NPCs) react to judgments of the player's and each others' activities. Games with a larger amount of social simulation have clear affinities to multi-agent systems (MAS) research on artificial societies. They differ in a number of key respects, however, due to a mixture of pragmatic game-design considerations and their typically strong embeddedness in narrative arcs, resulting in many important aspects of moral systems being represented using explicitly scripted scenarios rather than through agent-based simulations. In this position paper, we argue that these similarities and differences make RPGs a promising challenge domain for MAS research, highlighting features such as moral dilemmas situated in more organic settings than seen in game-theoretic models of social dilemmas, and heterogeneous representations of morality that use both moral calculus systems and social simulation. We illustrate some possible approaches using a case study of the morality systems in the game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Exploring Novel Game Spaces with Fluidic Games

ArXiv, 2018

With the growing integration of smartphones into our daily lives, and their increased ease of use... more With the growing integration of smartphones into our daily lives, and their increased ease of use, mobile games have become highly popular across all demographics. People listen to music, play games or read the news while in transit or bridging gap times. While mobile gaming is gaining popularity, mobile expression of creativity is still in its early stages. We present here a new type of mobile app -- fluidic games -- and illustrate our iterative approach to their design. This new type of app seamlessly integrates exploration of the design space into the actual user experience of playing the game, and aims to enrich the user experience. To better illustrate the game domain and our approach, we discuss one specific fluidic game, which is available as a commercial product. We also briefly discuss open challenges such as player support and how generative techniques can aid the exploration of the game space further.

POSH-SHARP: A Lightweight ToolKit for Creating Cognitive Agents

Agent design is an intricate process requiring skills from different disciplines. Thus experts in... more Agent design is an intricate process requiring skills from different disciplines. Thus experts in one domain are not necessarily experts in the others. Supporting the design of agents is important and needs to address varying skill and expertise as well as varying handling the design of complex agents. In this paper, a new agent design toolkit –POSH-SHARP– for intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and cognitive embodied agents is presented. It was designed to address the need for a robust agent development framework in highly restrictive environments such as the web or smartphones while being useful to both novice and expert users. It includes advanced functionality such as debug support, explicit design rules using a related design methodology and a simple set-up and distribution mechanism to reduce the authoring burden for large iteratively developed agents. The new framework was implemented in C# and contains sample code for different game environments to offer novice users a startin...

Mixed-Initiative Approaches to On-Device Mobile Game Design

Playing casual games is a wildly popular activity on smartphones. However, designing casual games... more Playing casual games is a wildly popular activity on smartphones. However, designing casual games is done by a smaller group of people, usually on desktop com-puters, using professional development tools. Our goal is to bring these activities closer together, in terms of who does them and how they do them. Our Gamika Technology platform is a 2D physics-based mobile game design environment. It comprises a 284- dimensional parametric design space, and poses mobile game design as the problem of navigating this space. We have built three mobile apps thus far to experiment with on-device, mixed-initiative navigation of the Gamika design space and some of its subspaces. We describe these apps here in terms of the initiatives that go into making a game with them, and how these are split between people and underlying AI software. Our overall goal is to democratise game design, so that an- yone and everyone can make casual games directly on their mobile phones or tablets.

Fluidic Games in Cultural Contexts

We introduce fluidic games, a type of casual creator that blends game play and game design. Fluid... more We introduce fluidic games, a type of casual creator that blends game play and game design. Fluidic games have a core of built-in games that anchor a space of de- sign possibilities around them, and encourage players to alternate between playing specific games and play- ing with the design space. Our Gamika Technology platform supports fluidic games on mobile devices, and we have thus far built three of them. In doing so, we have found that even for simple games, fluidic games require computational creativity support. This takes several forms intended to keep design sessions play- ful and fast-moving, including automated game design used as a form of brainstorming, mixed-initiative co- creative design to ease design-space navigation, and au- tomated game playing to evaluate game dynamics. Fi- nally, we have exhibited this fluidic-games concept in three distinct cultural settings: a series of rapid game jams lasting 1–2 hours each, an in-progress semester- long enrichment course with...

Building robust real-time game AI: simplifying & automating integral process steps in multi-platform design

Digital games are part of our culture and have gained significant attention over the last decade.... more Digital games are part of our culture and have gained significant attention over the last decade. The growing capabilities of home computers, gaming consoles and mobile phones allow current games to visualise 3D virtual worlds, photo-realistic characters and the inclusion of complex physical simulations. The growing computational power of those devices enables the usage of complex algorithms while visualising data. Therefore, opportunities arise for developers of interactive products such as digital games which introduce new, challenging and exciting elements to the next generation of highly interactive software systems. Two of those challenges, which current systems do not address adequately, are design support for creating Intelligent Virtual Agents and more believable non-player characters for immersive game-play. We start in this thesis by addressing the agent design support first and then extend the research, addressing the second challenge. The main contributions of this thesi...

A Parameter-Space Design Methodology for Casual Creators

Casual creators are creativity support tools intended to be fun and easy to use for exploratory c... more Casual creators are creativity support tools intended to be fun and easy to use for exploratory creation. We have built casual creators called fluidic game designers, which support exploratory game design directly on mobile devices. These work by encoding games in a parameterised design space and enabling player/designers to create new games by varying the parameters in a design interface and seeing changes in their design instantly. A question largely unanswered by existing work is how to choose a suitable parameter space. We describe a methodology for specifying and implementing parameterised design spaces for casual creators, a context that requires balancing a large and expressive space against a manageable and fun user interface. This methodology was derived through investigating and generalising how the parameter spaces for three fluidic games were conceived. It suggests an iterative process whereby parameters are sourced in seven different ways, within a dynamic of incrementa...

Design Methods for Democratising Mobile Game Design

Playing mobile games is popular among a large and diverse set of players, contrasting sharply wit... more Playing mobile games is popular among a large and diverse set of players, contrasting sharply with the limited set of companies and people who design them. We would like to democratise mobile game design by enabling players to design games on the same devices they play them on, without needing to program. Our concept of fluidic games aims to realise this vision by drawing on three design methodologies. The interaction style of fluidic games is that of casual creators; their end-user design philosophy is adapted from metadesign; and their technical implementation is based on parametric design. In this short article, we discuss how we've adapted these three methods to mobile game design, and some open questions that remain in order to empower end user game design on mobile phones in a way that rises beyond the level of typical user-generated content.