A physical three-way interactive game based on table tennis

Physical leisure activities such as table tennis provide healthy exercise and can offer a means to connect with others socially; however, players have to be in the same physical location to play. We have developed a networked table tennis-like game that is played with a real paddle and ball, augmented with a large-scale videoconference. Similar to networked computer games, this concept can support more than two locations: our “Table Tennis for Three” is a physical interactive game, based on traditional table tennis; however, it is playable by three players in three geographically distant locations. We hope that Table Tennis for Three has potential to achieve similar benefits known from traditional collocated physical leisure activity such as exercise, enjoyment and bringing people together to socialize.