A physical three-way interactive game based on table tennis

Abstract

Physical leisure activities such as table tennis provide healthy exercise and can offer a means to connect with others socially; however, players have to be in the same physical location to play. We have developed a networked table tennis-like game that is played with a real paddle and ball, augmented with a large-scale videoconference. Similar to networked computer games, this concept can support more than two locations: our “Table Tennis for Three” is a physical interactive game, based on traditional table tennis; however, it is playable by three players in three geographically distant locations. We hope that Table Tennis for Three has potential to achieve similar benefits known from tradi..