Sympathetic interfaces: using a plush toy to direct synthetic characters

  • Authors:

  • Michael Patrick Johnson;Andrew Wilson;Bruce Blumberg;Christopher Kline;Aaron Bobick

  • Affiliations:

  • Synthetic Characters Group, The Media Laboratory, MIT, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA;Vision and Modeling Group, The Media Laboratory, MIT, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA;Vision and Modeling Group, The Media Laboratory, MIT, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA;Synthetic Characters Group, The Media Laboratory, MIT, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA;Vision and Modeling Group, The Media Laboratory, MIT, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

We introduce the concept of a sympathetic inter$ace forcontrolling an animated synthetic character in a 3D virtualenvironment. A plush doll embedded with wireless sensors is used tomanipulate the virtual character in an iconic and intentionalmanner. The interface extends from the novel physical input devicethrough interpretation of sensor data to the behavioral brain ofthe virtual character. We discuss the design of the interface andfocus on its latest instantiation in the Swamped! exhibit atSIGGRAPH 98. We also present what we learned from hundreds ofcasual users, who ranged from young children to adults.