Disney Turns Plants Into Multi-Touch Sensors

SchrodingerZ writes "Designers of Disney Research in Pittsburgh Pa, have turned the average household plant into a musical device and remote control. Called the Botanicus Interacticus project, this new program can turn any household plant into touch-sensitive computer system. 'The system is built upon capacitive touch sensing — the principle used on touchscreens in smartphones and tablets — but instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, it monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies. It's called Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing.' This works by putting a pulsating electrode into the soil around a plant, which excites the plant, making any touch to the parts of the plant a replayable signal. This could mean soon swatting at your household plant could change the television channel or turn up the volume (PDF)."

Comments

Botanical abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

While an interesting development, I don't believe the average plant would thrive with the abuse of a std remote control usage.

Re:Botanical abuse

[durrr]

I'm growing a pair of melons and I intend to be very gentle with how I touch them.

Re:Botanical abuse

[ozmanjusri]

Melons are fine, but whatever you do, don't grow touch-sensitive Apples.

You'll be sued into oblivion.

Re:Botanical abuse

[mcgrew]

While an interesting development, I don't believe the average plant would thrive with the abuse of a std remote control usage.

It would work with any conductive material. It would work with dogs or humans or anything else that wasn't a good insulator. Kind of cool concept, but I saw far more interesting engineering when I worked there -- like the jumping fountains and the robot presidents.

And Disney is a weird place. If something looks real, it's probably fake. If it looks fake, it's probably real -- and this goes double for plants.

"Repayable"?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Can I get a potted plant to serve as an editor?

Or has this already happened?

Sensitive Plant

[MyLongNickName]

Combine this with a sensitive plant and you can have a lot of fun!

My stomata are turgid.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> "This works by putting a pulsating electrode into the soil
> around a plant, which excites the plant, making any touch
> to the parts of the plant a repayable signal."

Finally, nerds whose inability to get the girl has led to a useful perversion.

Touché + Plants = New Hype?

[kiehlster]

This was covered on Slashdot back in May as the Touché which turns any surface into a multi-touch surface. I'm wondering what made the hype return three months later with plants. It's cool that you can use this on plants, but why plants when you can do anything else that exists in an office environment. After all, plants need watering. Why not just use plastic plants? Or, are we all that much more interested in creating a visible emotional bond with our house plants?

Re:Touché + Plants = New Hype?

[vlm]

Or, are we all that much more interested in creating a visible emotional bond with our house plants?

I think its an agribusiness lure, like spray individual plants with (organic?) insecticide if and only if a bug is detected on that individual plant. How you'd tell the difference between a raindrop hitting it and a grasshopper hitting it is unclear. Personalized bug spraying is an interesting idea.

The closest similar thing is the old "motion detector connected to water sprayer" thing that's been available for years which theoretically repels at least some feral housepets. So rather than spraying water on the dog when it tries to bury a bone in the garden, this gadget sprays bug spray on individual grasshoppers when they try to eat individual plants.

It seems inevitable as image chips, DSP chips, comm bandwidth all increase.

The next step is probably something like a robot chicken. You can tell I don't live on a farm, but I'm told that with some crops and some chickens you can release chickens into the field and they ignore the plants and eat the bugs off the plants and deposit uncomposted "fertilizer" all around the plants. Basically like feathery ladybugs but much bigger. A robot chicken with IR illumination could patrol your field 24x7 (plus or minus solar battery charging) using an image recognition library to stomp every slug or other pest that it sees. Not only that, but using dgps it could report which plant got munched on, and when, and by what. May as well enable a continuous data recording and analysis of plant growth too as it patrols.

Somebody quick...

[wbr1]

....reshoot the 'clapper' commercial. 'Plant on, plant off, plant on plant off, the planter.'

Side question, does it work on Robert Plant?

No thanks Disney.

[Xest]

All my houseplants are Cacti.

Trolling the "meat is murder" crowd :)

[KillaBeave]

I want to take one of these setups to an organic orchard and program it to shriek in agony when someone picks the fruit. That should give those vegetarian hippies something to think about!

Security applications

[afeeney]

A touch-sensitive plant could be used for home or business security. It could be trained to sense contact at a certain threshold of pressure (e.g., a human footstep versus a breeze or a small animal) and summon support appropriately. Add some solar-powered electricity (or a gene splice with an electric eel) and it could zap the intruder.

Of course, there's only one thing they could call this application of the principle.

Robocrop.

welcome

[clovis]

I, for one, welcome our new botanical overlords.