A broadband connected toy, capable of facilitating games, reading stories and hosting remote communications.

The starfish has actuated arms, an LED face, an RFID reader, movement sensors, a speaker and microphone; all wirelessly connected via Bluetooth to a broadband connected PC. An onboard Arduino manages the autonomous behaviours and wireless communication.

Our workshop paper Character Mediated Communications [PDF], at IDC 2009, describes this work.

Connected Character was a BT research project with Andy Gower and Craig McCahill.