MagCubes: Magnetically Driven Tangible Widgets for Children

Abstract

MagCubes are tangible widgets for children that work both on and around mobile devices. The advantage of this technique is that it is simple, battery-free, and inexpensive because it solely relies on a magnetometer, which is already installed in modern smart devices. To motivate our approach, we suggest various applications using a MagGetz toolkit. The first application is a board game with a magnetic dice. With this application, users can input numbers by placing the dice in the specific area after throwing it. The second application is a simple drawer with a color picker cube. The third application is a math learning game with five different sizes of cubes. (The strength of the magnetic force is proportional to the size of the cubes).