Play Computer Games With Your Pet

Better than chewing blocks, plastic tunnels, treat sticks, and yes, possibly even tiny whirling metal wheels, a new contraption from Singapore-based Mixed Reality Lab lets you actually throw down electronically with your pet hamster. Metazoa Ludens ("Animal Player") is a "tactile, sensational, remote, augmented reality, pet interactive" product designed not so much to virtualize as "mix" human/pet reality.

How's it work? You put the hamster in a tank with a movable (by you) piece of bait. On your computer screen, the bait's represented by a 3D human avatar, which you control. Monitored by infrared sensors, the hamster also appears on your computer screen in hot pursuit. "Run away" from the virtual hamster and the contraption moves the real bait away from your pet in the tank. Voila! Instant super-expensive "human arm moving a piece of cheese" simulator!

It gets even zanier. To up the stakes, the playing field's literally pliable. What you see on your computer screen as a free-roaming 3D landscape with little dips and ridges is actually simulated physically in the tank by a system of quick-moving actuators that rest just below an elastic latex mesh. As you move across the terrain, the actuators move up and down to alter the configuration of your pet's landscape.

The press release says it's to be displayed at Wired Fest 2007, which I take to mean Wired NextFest, Wired Magazine's four-day technology festival which includes the latest advances in areas such as communications, entertainment, robots, security, etc.

You can view a video demonstration here.

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