Interactive houseplants

[Tom Morrow]

Disney Research develops interactive musical houseplants

Disney shows you how to play music on a houseplant Wired Magazine Disney researchers have come up with a system called Botanicus Interactus that can turn a typical household plant into a touch-sensitive computer peripheral. A single wire is placed into the soil, and the plant is then transformed into an interactive toy. Now it can detect if and where a plant has been touched, or even if someone just gets near the plant. So, what can you actually do with a touch-sensitive peace lily? Well, you could turn it into a musical instrument where each leaf plays a different note. “Computing is rapidly fusing with our dwelling places and, thanks to touchpads and Microsoft Kinect, interaction with computers is increasingly tactile and gestural,” explained Ivan Poupyrev, senior research scientist at Disney Research. “Still, this interaction is limited to computing devices. We wondered — what if a broad variety of everyday objects around us could interact with us?” The team will demonstrate an interactive garden of touch-sensitive plants at the Siggraph Emerging Technology expo, which started Monday. by Mark Brown complete article

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Submitted by Ezra

[Ezra]

Kevin Yee is calling this "Pandora technology", and posits its use for Avatar Land at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida:

Pandora technology

I can imagine walking through an area of real plants that make musical sounds when you touch them.