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Magnetact Animals

Masaya Ishikawa & Kentaro Yasu (2021)
Easily-constructed kinetic toys that work without any batteries

Magnetact Animals are magnetic sheet-based kinetic toys. With the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020, it has become difficult to hold workshops that bring people together in one place. So, we designed a kinetic toy kit that can be sent in an envelope, be constructed with ease, and work without any batteries. The kinetic toy, constructed using magnetic sheets, cardboard, and paper, allows the users to design and create "animals" with variable motions. At the two online workshops we held for 15 participants from 3 to 11 years old, all of the participants enjoyed building toys and some invented original mechanisms and new animals.

Publication:

  • Kentaro Yasu and Masaya Ishikawa. 2021. Magnetact Animals: A Simple Kinetic Toy Kit for a Creative Online Workshop for Children. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’21 Extended Abstracts), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451533 [ACM Digital Library]

(2021.4.24) Released.

Magnatact Animals Virtual Demo
Click on the image to open a new tab. We recommend turning on the audio. 
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​①Modules (add/remove) ②Zoom (in/out) ③Move the animal ④Change module type (Magnet / Paper) ⑤Change view angle ⑥Sound (ON/OFF)

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