Collaboration between play company KOMPAN and researchers from Danish universities and institutes could see children playing with virtual versions of their sporting heroes in the not too distant future.

The Body Games partnership has been investigating ways of using IT to create play equipment that encourages physical play and activity amongst children and teenagers, the basic principle of the idea being a floor made of digital tiles which allow interactive and intelligent play.

Each tile has a small computer, a pressure sensor and a light-emitting diode, and when the tiles are put together the surface has the potential to read and adapt to a child's movements. In this way, Body Games can adjust the nature and the challenge of the games to the age and physical ability of the child or children using it.

The team also sees 3D technology as a future development of the concept, raising the possibility of children being able to play with virtual versions of either themselves or even representations of their sporting heroes.

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