Events, actors and interaction of hybrid entities in virtual reality

To develop an interface to improve interaction, the first step is usually to explore the user's needs and perceptions. However, in our changing world, it is necessary to connect not only humans to the computer world, but also to develop interfaces for entities such as animals and plants. We have developed and tested some interfaces allowing us to study the effects of different kinds of interaction and how people change their perception of other virtual and living entities. These interfaces allow the user to have contact with other living beings, such as plants and animals, in unique ways that provide a better understanding of their "feelings". In the specific case of plants, this is achieved by transforming the measurement of changes in the soil where the plant is into humanly abstracted experiences, such as thirst, sadness and happiness. These events are processed and analyzed by a computer program that infers the current status of the plant so that this can be modeled like a FSM. One way to link the actions performed by the user with a desirable result in the virtual world is to effectively guess the user's needs and expectations. However, this is not always achieved. Tactile sensations, sounds and images can help us to immerse the user into our application, but in heterogeneous VR applications we need to include virtual references to connect all the entities in the Virtual world and change the way the user observes these entities. The following paper describes a Plant-Computer-Human interface involving a real and a virtual plant that was developed for VR and Art applications. We also describe the reactions of users to these applications.