Sueca - The card game
"Sueca" is the portuguese word for "swedish" and also the name of a popular portuguese card game. I have been calling it a "research project" simply due to the fact that this scenario allowed us to explore several research questions. It was actually part of a larger project, the PArCEIRO, along with other tabletop games. What is most interesting and special about this game is its collaborative and competitive setting, where two teams of two members each compete to win more points.
The project started with two joint master thesis: one to develop the game engine and a framework to play with physical cards, by Nuno Maia [code here]; and another to develop the robotic game player considering both the ai to choose game moves and the social interaction, by me [code here]. We followed a user-centred approach to design several aspects of the interaction, with collaboration and supervision of Patrícia Alves-Oliveira, Sofia Petisca and Tiago Ribeiro.
In the first setting or version of the game, participants played Sueca in groups of 3 together with the robot as the 4th player. The initial contributions include this video, a paper detailing the algorithmic approach to play the game, and a paper on trust towards robotic teammates.
Soon we envisioned another setting where two robots would play this game on different teams. As part of my PhD, two major user studies allowed the exploration of membership preferences and group-based emotions. Additionally, Sueca became part of the AMIGOS project, which involved new collaborations with Raquel Oliveira, Patrícia Arriaga and Iolanda Leite.