(Re-)connecting with Nature in Urban Life: Engaging with Wildlife via AI-powered Wearables
Zhuying Li, Si Cheng, Wei Wang, Min-Ling Zhang
Abstract
Connecting with nature is essential for our health and well-being. However, we are getting less connected with nature today because of urbanization. Considering urban is where human and other species co-habit, we believe there is an opportunity to design interactive technologies to engage urban residents with those wild species to deepen the residents’ connection with nature in their daily life. In this paper, we present GoChirp, an always-available AI-powered wearable device that connects users with nature by engaging them with surrounding wild birds. GoChirp embeds machine learning techniques to detect surrounding birds by recognizing birds’ chirping sound. The device brings the birds to users’ attention via haptic feedback that mimics the bird flapping. GoChirp comes with a mobile APP that supports users to take photos and identifying the species of the bird showing in the photo. With GoChirp, we hope to further the understanding of interaction design for connecting people with nature and inspire designers to consider the role of always-available technology in supporting human-nature interaction.