València (EFE).- A digital passport that will be tested on dolls, board games and puzzles will certify the sustainability and authenticity of toys to prevent plagiarism and counterfeiting, a problem that reached, only in the latest novelties, an impact economic in Spain of 1.2 million euros.
The 170,000 counterfeit toys detected by the National Police last Christmas have been the starting engine of the DLT4AIToys project, developed by the Technological Institute for Children’s Products and Leisure (AIJU) and the Technological Institute of Informatics (ITI), which are part of the Network of Technological Institutes of the Valencian Community (Redit).
In this project, financed by the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (Ivace) through FEDER funds, the creation of a digital passport is proposed, a web portal that the buyer of a toy can access through a QR code and that contains all the information regarding the components, materials and origin of the toys sold on the market.
“It is about creating confidence that the toy we have in our hands is safe, traceable and manufactured in Spain, something that, in a globalized market, is increasingly valued,” explains the project coordinator in an interview with EFE. in AIJU, José Carlos Sola.
Chinese dolls
He explains that the fake toys, coming mainly from China, are imported by pieces and assembled in Spain, so that they are undetectable in the controls.
While the most copied products tend to be dolls, especially those that represent characters from movies, video games or superheroes, for the manufacture of which a license must be paid.
“There are very exact copies, and until you look at the information that appears on the box you don’t realize it,” says Sola, who warns that the proliferation of toys that have not passed any control is not only an economic risk, but it can also be security.
In fact, he points out, the controls are the mechanism that certifies that the components, parts and materials are safe for children, and the lack of these controls implies an obvious risk.
“Passing a control indicates such important things as that the material is non-toxic, that the pieces of the toy, if it breaks, will not puncture or cut the child, that the toy is fireproof or that the hair of a stuffed animal does not cause allergies,” he details.
Understand how the child plays
All these data will be collected in the digital passport developed by AIJU, which the buyer of the toy will be able to see through a QR code attached to the product.
The web portal that will host this documentation, explains the researcher, will be one of the modules of the Multisectoral AI Platform, an online space that AIJU prepares not only to catalog toys and protect them from plagiarism, but also to understand how to play.
The platform aims to combine physical or traditional gaming with digital information, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.
The use of artificial intelligence
“A child can play with a traditional puzzle but, on a digital level, they can also interact with the puzzle in augmented reality, unlock online games that are based on the puzzle and even chat with a ‘bot’ that asks how they are doing and how his day has gone”, details José Carlos Sola.
This artificial intelligence can be used for “sentiment analysis”: if the child answers the ‘bot’ that they are sad several times in a row, the system can transfer that information to the parents, who can thus detect possible problems at home or at school.
In addition, the player’s information, which can also be stored on the web portal, can be used by the toy manufacturer to know who wins the game the most and how it is used.
“A manufacturer can find out, for example, if people play more board games in the north of Spain than in Andalusia, for example, where they prefer to play in the street with balls because the weather is good,” he says.
Sustainability
The information about the toys in this digital passport is not only useful for companies to learn about gaming habits, or to prevent plagiarism, but also has environmental importance.
According to Sola, having a summary of the information on all the materials and components allows ecological traceability of the products that the European Union already demands within its objectives for 2030, so much so that the researcher predicts that the digital passport will end up being mandatory in all the sectors.
On the AIJU platform, companies can include information on how to recycle the toys they sell, or even detail how to participate in their own systems to take back old toys in exchange for discounts on new purchases, if they have them.
The project coordinator believes that “it doesn’t matter if it’s a toy or a pair of shoes” and that the digital passport will soon be extended to other sectors, because “there is an increasing demand for children’s products to be made with bio-based materials, among other things ”.
For now, the dolls from the company Paola Reina, the board games from Falomir and the vertical puzzles from Gamemovil will be the first to be able to count and show buyers their digital passport. EFE