Posted on May 4, 2013 by Themethodcase
Botanicus Interacticus was exhibited at the Siggraph 2012 Emerging Technology Exhibition for the first time. Its technology can be used to design highly interactive responsive environments based on plants, developing new forms of organic, living interaction devices as well as creating organic ambient and pervasive interfaces.
Based on the sophisticated Touché sensing technology Botanicus Interacticus creates a magical experience through the non-invasive instrumentation of living plants. Aurora like particles are emitted around different plants, triggered and transformed by gestures and proximity between the human and the living organism. A range of plants such as a bamboo, an orchid, a snake plant and a custom build artificial one were explored, where each plant presented its unique interactive, visual and auditive character.
With its unique properties the instrumentation of the plants is simple, non-invasive, and does not damage them. It requires only a single wire placed anywhere in the plant soil.
Botanicus Interacticus enables us to use gestures as sliding the fingers on the stem of the orchid, detecting touch and grasp locations of a bamboo, tracking proximity between a human and a plant, and estimating the amount of touch contact leading to a rich amount of interaction possibilities.
The Botanicus Interacticus is being developed at Disney Research by Ivan Poupyrev in collaboration with Philipp Schoessler, Jonas Loh/Studio NAND, and Munehiko Sato. The project is based on Touché sensing technology invented and developed earlier at Disney Research, Pittsburgh.
Video to explain the project:
Text and photo by: Botanicus Interacticus