Disney Creates Touch Sensing Plants 'Botanicus Interacticus'

newstech

8 Aug

Disney Research has expanded their vision of turning everything into a touch surface, placing a focus on items of the garden variety. The result of this is a project called "Botanicus Interacticus," and it turns any plant into a capacitive touch controller.

A custom-built capacitive sensor module is placed within the soil, which exudes a low current throughout the plant. With this, it recognises when and where you touch the plant using more than 200 frequencies to ensure precision. Beyond this, it can also be used for tracking the proximity between you and the plant, and predict the amount of contact you are making with it.

Will this make it into Disneyland at some point? Of course. But the more eye-opening concepts are there about this pushing forward the idea of a living, organic interaction device. It's a fascinating use of capacitive technology. Moreover that, it's the hacking of an organism. I find that both awesome and scary at the same time.