“Life is more fun if you play games.”

Roald Dahl

In 2016 children have the opportunity to go further than board games, riding their bikes, and playing with Lego. Technologists are trying hard to open the young’s minds and get them playing in new and exciting ways that stimulate new ways of thinking. This means skills that translate into modern day needs.
In The Future of Child’s Play we look at 3D printing, hacked Furbies, and playing Minecraft with Hololens.

Thingmaker’s 3D printer for toys from Mattel

Autodesk and Mattel have collaborated to create a 3D printer coming later this year. Its biggest innovation might be its app that let’s children create their own toys.

The Open Furby Project

On the Open Furby Project’s Facebook page they talk about what they stand for:

The establishment and maintenance of the robot-human communication, both verbal and non-verbal, depend essentially on capabilities of naturally and plausibly showing emotions by generating facial expressions by the robot.
FURBY toy manufactured by Hasbro Inc. has a friendly appearance with outstanding capabilities in such price segment. Unfortunately, manufacturer does not provide for the possibility of using its product as a HRI (human-robot interaction) research platform. There is no possibility of full behaviour control. Our goal is to modify current version of FURBY and equipped him in a custom controller that allows to control him form PC.

This means that, as an open platform, the Furby can do a number of things never thought of before, like liking 100 likes on Facebook:

Play Minecraft with Hololens

Holographic 3D makes the screen feel like a window into the Minecraft world.

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.