Disney Turns A Plant Into a Controller

[manigamer]

Houseplants are the passive status buffs of home decorating; water them, put them in sun, and they produce more oxygen and brighten up the place.

It's time to put these lazy plants to work, and Disney has figured out how in about the strangest way we can possibly think of: Using the electrical properties of plants to make them control devices.
It works fairly simply. Just stick the sensor into the plant's soil anywhere you want, hook it up, and the sensor and plant's electrical properties do the rest.

The result is… well honestly it's pretty weird. Essentially you're wired directly into the plant's nervous system so the sensor can track, say, where you're touching it at a given moment. And it can also track multiple touches: Hook it up to a bushy plant and it'll show on a screen all the places it's touching something. None of this damages the plant as the sensor is essentially just completing a circuit.

This can also be used to build fake plants that sense and react just like real ones. For Disney this is technology they can incorporate into their theme parks but it has wide-ranging implications beyond that.
Mostly, though, we're just wondering how quickly we can replace hitting GameStop for new controllers with hitting the local garden center. Geraniums are a lot cheaper than DualShocks, after all.

Disney Research: Botanicus Interacticus

[Inexorable]

Looks like Disney has found a way to hook into the Money Plant.

[Arkonov]

Looks like Disney has found a way to hook into the Money Plant.

I see what you did there.

[Inexorable]

After looking around for a bit, I have found that the concept this device works on is not limited to plants. In fact, take a look at this video, pretty amazing:



Could be the new standard for future UI's.

[Spiderman3000]

creativity guys