Have you ever wanted to walk into your living room and turn on your TV by tickling your azaleas?  Or start your dishwasher by yelling at your fern?  Maybe sanitize your bathroom by smelling your poppies?  Well, thanks to the hard work of Ivan Poupyrev, from Disney Research (and presumably many others), this is a very likely reality in the near future.  Poupyrev and his “Touche” technology can create a multi-touch surface out of almost any object.  With just a single diode your Belladonna Lily can become a proximity sensing drum machine, your hibiscus becomes the new Siri and your daffodils will take your temperature.  However, as silly as this may sound it’s a good step in the direction of “ubiquitous computing.”  When everything is a potentially interactive device you can literally think outside the box when it comes to designing interactive technology.  The possibilities are much more exciting and expandable, and anybody with an iPad and an affinity for PopCap Games knows that when the zombie apocalypse finally arrives we are going to need our plants to do a lot more than just photosynthesize.

If you want to see and read more on the subject check out this article (with video) from www.fastcodesign.com