Cirkus is an app that supports many types of games where children move like animals such as kangaroos, lizards, frogs, crabs, bears, bunnies, and monkeys. The app is quite flexible and allows children to create their own games and rules as long as they move like animals. The design of the app keeps the focus on the activity rather than the screen. The app records movement (accelerometer, rotation, and bearing) data when children are performing as animals. This research has two purposes. The first is to collect movement data to train machine learning models so future games can automatically classify animal movements performed by children. The second is to collaborate with children to create new games supported by the Cirkus app. The potential benefits of this research are the development of games that promote being physically active, are more pro-social and less screen-centric, and use more democratic machine learning practices. In the future, we hope to use Cirkus to help children with Sensory Based Motor disorders playfully complete their physical therapy exercises. Below are some videos of the Cirkus interface in action. Please excuse the low production quality, as we are still developing Cirkus out.

I am the founder of Cirkus. I developed the technology probe, created the cloud infrastructure, and implemented the multiplayer networking functionality. I worked with scholars from Uppsala University and the largest circus group in Sweden to design the generic play framework that enables Cirkus to work for many games.