Plant Fairy: Improve Human-Plant Interaction for Children

Abstract This study aimed to facilitate interaction between children and plants as a form of education about ecosystem conservation. Planting is a desired access to contact with nature in the family environment because it is safer than animals and easy care. But children may have trouble treating plants as nature life, and may not find them attractive. Plants essentially have no ability to voluntarily move, express themselves and vocalize; thus, they are hard to give instant feedback to get human’s attention and evoke human’s empathy. In light of these conditions, we propose an interactive system, called Plant Fairy, that uses augmented reality as an expressive medium to anthropomorphize plants and create a more dynamic and engaging experience to evoke children’s empathy and convey plants’ needs for survival to children. The system comprises environmental sensors and an AR interface that communicates via Bluetooth to translates environmental changes and human interactions into visual and auditory feedback. We conduct a user study with children and their caregivers to confirm the system’s effectiveness. The results indicate our system can improve children’s perception of plants as living entities and be more attractive to children than normal plants. Overall, the “Plant Fairy” system demonstrates the potential of AR in education, particularly for stimulating children’s cognitive development and fostering a deeper understanding of plant life.