PlantAR

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  PlantAR

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Inspiration

In the time of increased urbanization and less exposure to nature, we hope people can build a caring and compassionate relationship with nature and themselves.
Inspired by their innate endless curiosity, we created a mixed reality experience for children to forge a connection with their plants. Research shows us how expressing compassion for nature’s living creatures directly impacts self-care. “Interaction with indoor plants may reduce psychological and physiological stress by suppressing autonomic nervous system activity in young adults” (J Physiol Anthropol. 2015; 34(1): 21.). This is put to the test in a classroom environment where kids have the chance to share their experiences with their classmates while learning to be empathetic. We are excited to explore the concept of connecting wellness in life through Mixed Reality Experience and our creation of PlantAR.

What it does

PlantAR plants self-growth concepts through interactions with a classroom flower, MR Plant. Kids learn to be caring and compassionate by connecting to nature through PlantAR. Bringing nature into the classroom with innovative and unique plant care methods. Taking care of MR Plant creates interactions in the Mixed Reality space that shows the growth of the flower. By forging a connection with nature, we created a fun and interactive experience for children to grow their curiosities.

How we built it

We wanted to showcase the positive connections between Mixed Reality and Life. In Unity, we made animations and speech recognition technology. We also utilized the PULSAR 3D printer to create portions of the experiences to enhance our concept. The hardware was developed using ESP32 microcontroller with the code written in Arduino IDE. 3 sensors were utilized-- web speech API from hugging faces, in-built touch sensor, and raindrop sensor to measure communication, holding, and watering actions respectively. The servo motors carry out the primary action of pulling the petals downward so the flower can bloom.

Challenges we ran into

These only inspired us to continue growing to find solutions for our project vision. "I can hack that." A few memorable challenges we experienced: establishing two way blue-tooth communication between the headset and hardware took many tries. We also experienced challenges with the speech and sound accessibility. In the first test phases of this, we found that accents created a barrier for our wanted actions in both MR and with MR Plant.

Accomplishments that we're proud

Through our teamwork with each other we were able to create our functioning prototype within the timespan allotted. We accomplished milestones in development and product design from start to finish. We realized 3 different kinds of interactions, involving virtual and physical tech. Literally everything we did throughout the project was step a towards our final PlantAR experience and we are so happy with it.

What we learned

We learned that this Mixed Reality experience is intriguing for kids of any age. Although our main demographic remains kids. We also learned that we want our creation to be accessible across socio economic stratifications, encouraging curious natures. Through our cooperation and creative inputs we can accomplish our visions. Growing together through our creative processes we learned a lot about hacking, hardware and connections.

What's next for PlantAR

We envision Mr Plant becoming a part of learning experiences for children around the world. Possible developments for going to market where individuals of all ages can have their own PlantAR.

Built With

• esp32
• huggingface
• singularity
• unity