Check your email with a tap on your houseplant

[Nipuna]

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcRSKEIucjk[/media]

It's hard to interact with plants - they aren't exactly known for their active social lives. But a new technique, developed by researchers at Disney research labs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, does at least let us track our interactions with them through one sense - touch.

Separate parts of a plant like the stem and the leaves have their own specific electrical properties. This means different frequencies of electricity take unique paths through a plant. By watching the changes in the amplitude of specific frequencies in an applied current, Ivan Poupyrev and a team of Disney researchers were able to figure out where a plant was touched (see video above).

At the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, California, the group used this property to turn plants into controllers for audio and visual effects, using the frequency drops that result from different parts of the plant being touched to control the effects.

Thinking creatively - and I'm just speculating here - the technique may also be useful for monitoring large trees which are in danger of falling into buildings; the frequency pattern returned to the device should change as a tree's roots gradually loosen. Or if you get bored of clicking a mouse all day, you could just program a friendly houseplant to check your emails with the squeeze of a leaf.