Smart toy
Encyclopedia
A smart toy is a toy
which effectively has its own intelligence by virtue of on-board electronics. These enable it to learn, behave according to pattern, and alter its actions depending upon environmental stimuli. Typically, it can adjust to the abilities of the player. A modern smart toy has electronics consisting of one or more microprocessor
s or microcontroller
s, volatile
and/or non-volatile memory
, storage devices
, and various forms of input - output devices
. It may be networked
together with other smart toys or a personal computer
in order to enhance its play value
or educational features. Generally, the smart toy may be controlled by software
which is embedded in firmware
or else loaded from an input device such as a USB flash drive
, memory Stick
or
CD-ROM
. Smart toys frequently have extensive multimedia
capabilities, and these can be utilized to produce a realistic, animated, simulated personality for the toy. Some commercial examples of smart toys are Amazing Amanda, Furby
, iDog
, and
AIBO
.
integrated into the play experience in order to create simulated
human-like intelligence or its facsimile.
s such as those of the eighteenth and nineteenth century cuckoo clock
s, music boxes
of the nineteenth, and Disney audio-animatronics
of the twentieth. Perhaps the biggest early contribution is from novelty and toy makers from the 1800s who made automaton
s such as Vaucanson's
mechanical duck
, von Kempelen's
The Turk
, and the Silver Swan
. All pre-twentieth-century precursors had in common that they were mechanical contrivances. By the second half of the 1900s toys featuring built-in media players became common. For example, Mattel introduced a variety of dolls in the 1960s and 1970's that used a pull string activated talking device to make the dolls "talk" such as the talking Crissy doll
and Chatty Cathy
.
However, it remained until the introduction of the microprocessor in the mid-1970s for smart toys to come into their own. Texas Instrument's Speak & Spell
which came on the market in the late 1970s was one of the first full-featured smart toys. The device is similar to a very limited lap-top with LED read-out. It is used for spelling games and guessing a "mystery code." It speaks and makes a variety of interesting sound effects. Another early example is Teddy Ruxpin
, a robotic teddy bear which came out in the 1980s. It reads children's stories via a recording device built into its back and swivels its eyes and mouth.
Even the earliest toys from the nineteenth century on have in common with their modern-day smart toy counterparts that they appear to be sentient and life-like, at least to the extent possible using the technology available at the time. Contemporary smart toys utilize speech recognition
and activation
; that is, they appear to comprehend and react to words that are spoken. Through speech synthesis
smart toys speak prerecorded words and phrases. These kinds of technologies, when combined together, animate the toys and give them a life-like persona
.
Another hardware feature of modern smart toys is sensor
s and a actuator
s which enable the smart toy to be aware of what is going on in its environment. These permit the toy to tell its orientation, determine if it is being played with indoors or outdoors, and know who is playing with it based upon the strength of the squeeze the child's hand gives it or similar factors.
A typical example is Lego Mindstorms
, a series of robotic-like devices, which integrate LEGO pieces with sensors and accessories. These toys include microcontrollers which control the robot
s. They are pre-programmed by personal computer and utilize light and touch sensors along with accelerometer
s. Accelerometers and temperature, pressure and humidity sensors, can also be used to create various effects by smart toy designers.
The development of smart toys received a major boost in 1998 when semi-conductor manufacturer, Intel, and toy maker, Mattel, Inc. entered into a joint venture to open a Smart Toy Lab in Portland, Oregon. This led to products that were marketed under the Intel Play
brand. The first product in the line was the QX3 Computer Microscope. The Lab evolved into a toy company known today as Digital Blue, a division of Prime Entertainment, Inc. of Marietta, GA.
nor do they stimulate his or her imagination. Consequently, regardless of store-shelf attractiveness, the child tires quickly of them after only one or two play sessions, and the parents' investment is largely wasted. Stevanne Auerbach
, in her book Smart Play--Smart Toys introduces the notion of Play Quotient or simply PQ.
Auerbach criticizes smart toys for often having low PQs. PQ is a rating system based upon a weighted average
constructed from a comprehensive list of play value attributes. Playthings with higher PQs are desirable from the standpoint of stimulating the child's imagination, creativity, and inquisitiveness. Generally, children choose to play with these products over and over again. Those toys with low PQs are quickly set aside. The child finds them boring and uninteresting.
Many child development
experts prefer open-ended toys such as construction toys
, blocks
, doll
s, etc. over smart toys.
For example, a cardboard box that the child turns into a pretend play house will be played with continuously by the child for many hours whereas an expensive smart toy can quickly exhaust the child's interest once its novelty has worn off.
Jillian Trezise typifies the attitude often taken by child development specialists and educators towards smart toys, "...if kids can't take their expensive toys to the sandpit or open them up to see how they work, then they don't provide much educational value. All they do is entertain and they don't hold young people's attention for very long."
Another implicit concern about smart toys is that even when they hold the child's attention they could become so entertaining that parents may be tempted to turn over some of the child-rearing to the smart toys. Thus, children will be deprived of needed parental attention. In other words, because of their strong multimedia capabilities children may watch presentations provided by the smart toys and be entertained, but will not really play with the devices nor be otherwise engaged by them.
Judy Shackelford, a toy industry veteran, has a more positive view regarding smart toys. She cautions that children may even be deprived should they be not exposed to them. She sees smart toys as part of the surrounding environment that children will need to adapt to as they mature. Should they not be given access to these kinds of toys, they may become less well adapted to thrive and benefit as technology evolves.
Smart toy advocates also point to research indicating that children learn more effectively with good interactive software. This seems to support the idea that smart toys may have many educational benefits as well.
Mark Allen states that the greatest impediment to the further growth of the smart toy industry is the lack of development of artificial intelligence
and speech recognition
. At their present stage of evolution smart toys really can't learn so they are limited to predefined actions and speech. Present artificial intelligence capabilities are too expensive to implement in a toy, but this will change as computational power and speed come down in price. Eventually this will result in cheaper technology, enhanced functionality, and a richer play experience. Some toy designers think it could be five years or more before the technology is cheap enough to be widely available.
Others have cited the high cost of MEMS
-based sensors and actuators as a factor constraining the rapid development of smart toys. These costs are expected to come down eventually also, thereby helping toy companies to hit their price targets.
According to figures from the NPD Group, at the end of 1999 the smart toy segment made up 2.5 percent of the $23 billion toy market.
The smart toy industry grew out of several other product categories, which include children's software, electronic toys, and video games. A 2001 Forrester Research study projected that the smart toy segment would grow to more than $2 billion by the year 2003 . Factors enhancing the growth of the smart toy segment include the greatly more sophisticated tastes of children today as well as the spread of home PCs..
A 2005 market research study by Tangull America LLC of New York, NY indicated that toys with embedded information technologies--that is, nano, bio and cognitive technologies--are growing over 15% annually, and will grow to sales of US $146 billion by 2015. As an example, one of the "smart toys" the study cites are "interactive puppets" that become "real playmates" through the combination of artificial intelligence and ultrafine sensors. The latter can measure changes in facial expressions, movements and environment and the puppets react accordingly.
Stevanne Auerbach emphasizes smart toys which have strong play value for the child, and are the "right toy at the right time." She does not favor those toys which fail to encourage discovery and exploration. Auerbach quips that "a toy playing with a child, as opposed to a child playing with a toy, is not beneficial for the child.
Those toys that give the child control over interaction are best according to some child development researchers. Kiely Gouley argues that "...some of these toys are very entertaining and they make the child a passive observer." She continues: "...you want the child to engage with the world. If the toy does everything, if it sings and beeps and shows pictures, what does the child have to do?"
Smart toys should have very clean, easy-to-understand and navigate user interface
s. Claire Lerner, a child development specialist, says that pretend play can be inhibited by highly structured toys: "They superimpose someone else's story on the kids. So kids don't develop their imaginations." In her view, simpler toys are preferable, because they are more flexible.
From a designer of smart toy's viewpoint this means that in order to achieve simplicity technologies need to be combined so as to render a very naturalistic user interface within the limits of other design constraints.
Children by nature are unpredictable and often fail to follow the same rules followed by adults. One of the tasks of the designer is to anticipate ways that interaction with children can fail to be as expected, and to guide the user into one of the expected responses. This can be achieved by giving the child options to select and other types of cues to follow.
For parents and child development specialists alike, the task remains to select the right toys at the right time. However, from the toy designer's standpoint the challenge is to identify the best technologies at feasible cost, and then to develop products around those capabilities and limitations of the technologies used in smart toys.
Anthropologist David Lancy argues that parent-child play is largely an artifact of wealthy developed countries not practiced by most of the world's population. It results from competitive pressures to ready children for survival in an information-based economy. He views the promotion of interaction between parents and children in "play activities" as a form of cultural imperialism practiced by the upper and upper middle class upon lower income socioeconomic strata. This is possibly one reservation on a completely unrestricted view that parents should always be involved in selecting appropriate smart toys for their children.
Toy
A toy is any object that can be used for play. Toys are associated commonly with children and pets. Playing with toys is often thought to be an enjoyable means of training the young for life in human society. Different materials are used to make toys enjoyable and cuddly to both young and old...
which effectively has its own intelligence by virtue of on-board electronics. These enable it to learn, behave according to pattern, and alter its actions depending upon environmental stimuli. Typically, it can adjust to the abilities of the player. A modern smart toy has electronics consisting of one or more microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
s or microcontroller
Microcontroller
A microcontroller is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of RAM...
s, volatile
Volatile memory
Volatile memory, also known as volatile storage, is computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information, unlike non-volatile memory which does not require a maintained power supply...
and/or non-volatile memory
Non-volatile memory
Non-volatile memory, nonvolatile memory, NVM or non-volatile storage, in the most basic sense, is computer memory that can retain the stored information even when not powered. Examples of non-volatile memory include read-only memory, flash memory, ferroelectric RAM, most types of magnetic computer...
, storage devices
Data storage device
thumb|200px|right|A reel-to-reel tape recorder .The magnetic tape is a data storage medium. The recorder is data storage equipment using a portable medium to store the data....
, and various forms of input - output devices
Input/output
In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
. It may be networked
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
together with other smart toys or a personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
in order to enhance its play value
Play value
Play value is the essential value of a toy or game for play.The term is frequently employed in the field of child development and playwork for the assessment of toys, games, equipment and spaces. When they are fun and engaging, playthings and spaces are said to have play value. Those that are...
or educational features. Generally, the smart toy may be controlled by software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
which is embedded in firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
or else loaded from an input device such as a USB flash drive
USB flash drive
A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
, memory Stick
Memory Stick
Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks...
or
CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
. Smart toys frequently have extensive multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
capabilities, and these can be utilized to produce a realistic, animated, simulated personality for the toy. Some commercial examples of smart toys are Amazing Amanda, Furby
Furby
A Furby was a popular electronic robotic toy resembling a hamster/owl-like creature which went through a period of being a "must-have" toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998, with continual sales until 2000...
, iDog
IDog
The iDog is a robot dog toy designed and manufactured by Sega Toys, marketed by Hasbro in the United States. iDog receives input from an external music source, such as a MP3 player, lighting up and "dancing" to the rhythm of the music...
, and
AIBO
AIBO
AIBO was one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony...
.
Common Confusions
Smart toys are frequently confused with toys for which it is claimed that children who play with them become smarter. Examples are educational toys that may or may not provide on-board intelligence features. A toy which merely contains a media player for telling the child a story should not be classified as a smart toy even if the player contains its own microprocessor. What best distinguishes a smart toy is the way the on-board intelligence is holisticallyHolism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
integrated into the play experience in order to create simulated
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
human-like intelligence or its facsimile.
History of smart toys
Modern smart toys have their early roots in clockworkClockwork
A clockwork is the inner workings of either a mechanical clock or a device that operates in a similar fashion. Specifically, the term refers to a mechanical device utilizing a complex series of gears....
s such as those of the eighteenth and nineteenth century cuckoo clock
Cuckoo clock
A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum-regulated, that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and typically has a mechanical cuckoo that emerges with each note...
s, music boxes
Musical box
A music box is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and called carillons à musique...
of the nineteenth, and Disney audio-animatronics
Audio-Animatronics
Audio-Animatronics is the registered trademark for a form of robotics created by Walt Disney Imagineering for shows and attractions at Disney theme parks, and subsequently expanded on and used by other companies. The robots move and make noise, generally in speech or song...
of the twentieth. Perhaps the biggest early contribution is from novelty and toy makers from the 1800s who made automaton
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
s such as Vaucanson's
Jacques de Vaucanson
Jacques de Vaucanson was a French inventor and artist who was responsible for the creation of impressive and innovative automata and machines such as the first completely automated loom.-Early life:...
mechanical duck
Digesting Duck
The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them...
, von Kempelen's
Wolfgang von Kempelen
Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd was a Hungarian author and inventor with Irish ancestors.-Life:...
The Turk
The Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player , was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854, it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was exposed in the early 1820s as an...
, and the Silver Swan
Silver Swan (automaton)
The Silver Swan is an automaton dating from the 18th Century and is housed in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Teesdale, County Durham, England....
. All pre-twentieth-century precursors had in common that they were mechanical contrivances. By the second half of the 1900s toys featuring built-in media players became common. For example, Mattel introduced a variety of dolls in the 1960s and 1970's that used a pull string activated talking device to make the dolls "talk" such as the talking Crissy doll
Crissy Doll
Crissy is an American fashion doll with a feature to adjust the length of its hair. Crissy was created in the Ideal Toy Corporation's prototype department in 1968. She has auburn hair and is 18 inch tall...
and Chatty Cathy
Chatty Cathy
Chatty Cathy is a doll manufactured by the Mattel toy company from 1959 to 1965. The doll was first released in stores and appeared in television commercials beginning in 1960. Chatty Cathy celebrated her 50th birthday in 2010....
.
However, it remained until the introduction of the microprocessor in the mid-1970s for smart toys to come into their own. Texas Instrument's Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell (toy)
The Speak & Spell line is a series of electronic handheld educational toys created by Texas Instruments that consist of a speech synthesizer, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM game library modules...
which came on the market in the late 1970s was one of the first full-featured smart toys. The device is similar to a very limited lap-top with LED read-out. It is used for spelling games and guessing a "mystery code." It speaks and makes a variety of interesting sound effects. Another early example is Teddy Ruxpin
Teddy Ruxpin
Teddy Ruxpin is a children's toy talking bear. The bear would move his mouth and eyes while 'reading' stories which were played on an audio tape cassette deck built into his back. It was created by Ken Forsse with later assistance by Larry Larsen and John Davies. Later versions would use a digital...
, a robotic teddy bear which came out in the 1980s. It reads children's stories via a recording device built into its back and swivels its eyes and mouth.
Even the earliest toys from the nineteenth century on have in common with their modern-day smart toy counterparts that they appear to be sentient and life-like, at least to the extent possible using the technology available at the time. Contemporary smart toys utilize speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
and activation
Voice command device
A voice command device is a device controlled by means of the human voice. By removing the need to use buttons, dials and switches, consumers can easily operate appliances with their hands full or while doing other tasks....
; that is, they appear to comprehend and react to words that are spoken. Through speech synthesis
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
smart toys speak prerecorded words and phrases. These kinds of technologies, when combined together, animate the toys and give them a life-like persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
.
Another hardware feature of modern smart toys is sensor
Sensor
A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an instrument. For example, a mercury-in-glass thermometer converts the measured temperature into expansion and contraction of a liquid which can be read on a calibrated...
s and a actuator
Actuator
An actuator is a type of motor for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. It is operated by a source of energy, usually in the form of an electric current, hydraulic fluid pressure or pneumatic pressure, and converts that energy into some kind of motion. An actuator is the mechanism by which...
s which enable the smart toy to be aware of what is going on in its environment. These permit the toy to tell its orientation, determine if it is being played with indoors or outdoors, and know who is playing with it based upon the strength of the squeeze the child's hand gives it or similar factors.
A typical example is Lego Mindstorms
Lego Mindstorms
The LEGO Mindstorm series of kits contain software and hardware to create small, customizable and programmable robots. They include a programmable 'Brick' computer that controls the system, a set of modular sensors and motors, and LEGO parts from the Technics line to create the mechanical...
, a series of robotic-like devices, which integrate LEGO pieces with sensors and accessories. These toys include microcontrollers which control the robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
s. They are pre-programmed by personal computer and utilize light and touch sensors along with accelerometer
Accelerometer
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration, also called the four-acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration , but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame...
s. Accelerometers and temperature, pressure and humidity sensors, can also be used to create various effects by smart toy designers.
The development of smart toys received a major boost in 1998 when semi-conductor manufacturer, Intel, and toy maker, Mattel, Inc. entered into a joint venture to open a Smart Toy Lab in Portland, Oregon. This led to products that were marketed under the Intel Play
Intel Play
The Intel Play product line, made by Intel, is a product line of consumer "toy" electronic devices. The other toys were the Digital Movie Creator, the Computer Sound Morpher, and the Me2Cam....
brand. The first product in the line was the QX3 Computer Microscope. The Lab evolved into a toy company known today as Digital Blue, a division of Prime Entertainment, Inc. of Marietta, GA.
Controversies regarding smart toys
Widespread commercialization of smart toys is mainly a 21st century phenomenon. As they have gained acceptance in the marketplace, controversy has been brewing. One of the chief criticisms has been that despite often being technical marvels, many smart toys have only limited play value. In short, these toys neither involve the child in play activityPlay (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
nor do they stimulate his or her imagination. Consequently, regardless of store-shelf attractiveness, the child tires quickly of them after only one or two play sessions, and the parents' investment is largely wasted. Stevanne Auerbach
Stevanne Auerbach
Stevanne Auerbach also known as Dr. Toy, is an American educator, child development expert, writer and toyologist. She is known for being a consummate gadfly of the toy industry. After more than thirty years in the field of toys, she was named a Wonder Woman of Toys by Playthings Magazine...
, in her book Smart Play--Smart Toys introduces the notion of Play Quotient or simply PQ.
Auerbach criticizes smart toys for often having low PQs. PQ is a rating system based upon a weighted average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
constructed from a comprehensive list of play value attributes. Playthings with higher PQs are desirable from the standpoint of stimulating the child's imagination, creativity, and inquisitiveness. Generally, children choose to play with these products over and over again. Those toys with low PQs are quickly set aside. The child finds them boring and uninteresting.
Many child development
Child development
Child development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....
experts prefer open-ended toys such as construction toys
Construction set
A construction set is a set of standardized pieces that allow for the construction of a variety of different models. The pieces avoid the lead time of manufacturing custom pieces, and of requiring special training or design time to construct complex systems...
, blocks
Toy block
Toy blocks , are wooden, plastic or foam pieces of various shapes and colors that are used as building toys...
, doll
Doll
A doll is a model of a human being, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have traditionally been used in magic and religious rituals throughout the world, and traditional dolls made of materials like clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls...
s, etc. over smart toys.
For example, a cardboard box that the child turns into a pretend play house will be played with continuously by the child for many hours whereas an expensive smart toy can quickly exhaust the child's interest once its novelty has worn off.
Jillian Trezise typifies the attitude often taken by child development specialists and educators towards smart toys, "...if kids can't take their expensive toys to the sandpit or open them up to see how they work, then they don't provide much educational value. All they do is entertain and they don't hold young people's attention for very long."
Another implicit concern about smart toys is that even when they hold the child's attention they could become so entertaining that parents may be tempted to turn over some of the child-rearing to the smart toys. Thus, children will be deprived of needed parental attention. In other words, because of their strong multimedia capabilities children may watch presentations provided by the smart toys and be entertained, but will not really play with the devices nor be otherwise engaged by them.
Judy Shackelford, a toy industry veteran, has a more positive view regarding smart toys. She cautions that children may even be deprived should they be not exposed to them. She sees smart toys as part of the surrounding environment that children will need to adapt to as they mature. Should they not be given access to these kinds of toys, they may become less well adapted to thrive and benefit as technology evolves.
Smart toy advocates also point to research indicating that children learn more effectively with good interactive software. This seems to support the idea that smart toys may have many educational benefits as well.
The smart toy industry
Market research company, GfK Australia, found that parents are spending record amounts on electronic and interactive toys.Mark Allen states that the greatest impediment to the further growth of the smart toy industry is the lack of development of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
and speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
. At their present stage of evolution smart toys really can't learn so they are limited to predefined actions and speech. Present artificial intelligence capabilities are too expensive to implement in a toy, but this will change as computational power and speed come down in price. Eventually this will result in cheaper technology, enhanced functionality, and a richer play experience. Some toy designers think it could be five years or more before the technology is cheap enough to be widely available.
Others have cited the high cost of MEMS
Microelectromechanical systems
Microelectromechanical systems is the technology of very small mechanical devices driven by electricity; it merges at the nano-scale into nanoelectromechanical systems and nanotechnology...
-based sensors and actuators as a factor constraining the rapid development of smart toys. These costs are expected to come down eventually also, thereby helping toy companies to hit their price targets.
According to figures from the NPD Group, at the end of 1999 the smart toy segment made up 2.5 percent of the $23 billion toy market.
The smart toy industry grew out of several other product categories, which include children's software, electronic toys, and video games. A 2001 Forrester Research study projected that the smart toy segment would grow to more than $2 billion by the year 2003 . Factors enhancing the growth of the smart toy segment include the greatly more sophisticated tastes of children today as well as the spread of home PCs..
A 2005 market research study by Tangull America LLC of New York, NY indicated that toys with embedded information technologies--that is, nano, bio and cognitive technologies--are growing over 15% annually, and will grow to sales of US $146 billion by 2015. As an example, one of the "smart toys" the study cites are "interactive puppets" that become "real playmates" through the combination of artificial intelligence and ultrafine sensors. The latter can measure changes in facial expressions, movements and environment and the puppets react accordingly.
Selection criteria
The issue of balance is often mentioned in connection with smart toys--namely, that their use should be kept in proportion with other play activities. They should also be age appropriate and not become a substitute for interaction with parents. Playing with smart toys should be a supplement, not a replacement, for traditional play activities.Stevanne Auerbach emphasizes smart toys which have strong play value for the child, and are the "right toy at the right time." She does not favor those toys which fail to encourage discovery and exploration. Auerbach quips that "a toy playing with a child, as opposed to a child playing with a toy, is not beneficial for the child.
Those toys that give the child control over interaction are best according to some child development researchers. Kiely Gouley argues that "...some of these toys are very entertaining and they make the child a passive observer." She continues: "...you want the child to engage with the world. If the toy does everything, if it sings and beeps and shows pictures, what does the child have to do?"
Smart toys should have very clean, easy-to-understand and navigate user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
s. Claire Lerner, a child development specialist, says that pretend play can be inhibited by highly structured toys: "They superimpose someone else's story on the kids. So kids don't develop their imaginations." In her view, simpler toys are preferable, because they are more flexible.
From a designer of smart toy's viewpoint this means that in order to achieve simplicity technologies need to be combined so as to render a very naturalistic user interface within the limits of other design constraints.
Children by nature are unpredictable and often fail to follow the same rules followed by adults. One of the tasks of the designer is to anticipate ways that interaction with children can fail to be as expected, and to guide the user into one of the expected responses. This can be achieved by giving the child options to select and other types of cues to follow.
For parents and child development specialists alike, the task remains to select the right toys at the right time. However, from the toy designer's standpoint the challenge is to identify the best technologies at feasible cost, and then to develop products around those capabilities and limitations of the technologies used in smart toys.
Anthropologist David Lancy argues that parent-child play is largely an artifact of wealthy developed countries not practiced by most of the world's population. It results from competitive pressures to ready children for survival in an information-based economy. He views the promotion of interaction between parents and children in "play activities" as a form of cultural imperialism practiced by the upper and upper middle class upon lower income socioeconomic strata. This is possibly one reservation on a completely unrestricted view that parents should always be involved in selecting appropriate smart toys for their children.