Creative gadget design in fictions: generalized planning in analogical spaces

Science-fiction and fantasy stories often contain objects never envisioned previously. Inventing gadgets like lightsabers or mythical creatures like griffins is a creative task. Traditional computational storytelling systems are limited in their expressivity because they cannot create new types of objects or gadgets. The Japanese manga series Doraemon exemplifies the role of new and creative gadgets in creating fun and successful stories. We surveyed five volumes of Doraemon and identified 9 cognitive strategies of gadget creation, unified in a 5-step process. We present an algorithm to create new types of gadgets in the context of story generation. The algorithm is a combination of partial-order planning and analogical reasoning. Although Doraemon is our motivating example, we can also generate gadgets commonly seen in other science fictions and fairy tales. Author Keywords Story generation, fictional gadget, computational creativity ACM Classification Keywords H.4.m [Information Sys...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CANDC
• Authors: Boyang Li, Mark O. Riedl
• Keywords: CANDC 2011, Creative Gadgets, Emerging Technology, Information Systems Applications, Japanese Manga Series