Physical Presence Pet

“Future Technologies You Can Feel”

Project Title: Physical Presence Pet
Team Members: Brian He, Sophie Huang, Paige Li, Joy Lim, William Zhang, Jerry Zheng
Faculty Advisor: Derek Ham

The Idea

The concept behind Physical Presence Pet (PPP) began with a shared longing. Each team member had left beloved pets behind when coming to the ETC, either across borders or into no-pet housing. Their solution? Create a digital companion that could live with you in XR.

The original pitch focused on a virtual pet that would live in your space and encourage more consistent VR use. When ETC Director Derek Ham saw the proposal, he offered to merge it with a prototype of his own: a plush bear embedded with a Meta Quest controller, paired with a reactive VR head.

The resulting hybrid project became Physical Presence Pet, a deeply tactile, emotionally driven experiment in multisensory presence.

The Process

The team quickly discovered that the original prototype—embedding a Meta Quest controller inside a stuffed bear—was too unstable for accurate VR tracking. The plush would jitter or drift unpredictably, making believable interaction impossible. So they pivoted to a new platform: Apple Vision Pro. Its advanced spatial tracking capabilities, combined with hand and eye tracking, eliminated the need for external hardware and opened up new possibilities for spatially aware, untethered play.

They designed and built a creature they called Luceal: a soft, snow-colored plush with features inspired by cats, dogs, and seals. To preserve Luceal’s emotional appeal, the team consulted with IDeATe’s Olivia Robinson and Natalya Pinchuk, who taught them to integrate conductive yarn and textile-based variable resistors directly into the plush’s skin. These custom-fabricated, handmade sensors made Luceal responsive to pressure and petting without compromising softness or comfort.

Aligning the digital pet’s behavior with the location of the physical plush turned out to be their hardest technical challenge. For most of the semester, the two were misaligned. Rather than force a technical solution, the team cleverly reframed the problem through narrative: the plush Luceal would be asleep and dreaming of her animated virtual self, who floats gently above her body.

Then, a breakthrough. With just one week remaining, Jesse Schell suggested the team track the hands holding the plush rather than the plush itself. The team quickly reconfigured the system to map Luceal’s digital avatar to the user’s hand position rather than the plush directly, allowing the two versions to finally sync in space and motion.

The Impact

Physical Presence Pet became one of the ETC’s most technically daring and emotionally resonant projects. It pushed the limits of the Apple Vision Pro, integrating e-textile engineering, UX storytelling, and immersive computing into a seamless multisensory companion.

The project was also a test of teamwork. From UX to electronics to materials sourcing, every team member faced unique challenges that demanded unique solutions. They also experienced another major real-life curveball when Jerry Zheng underwent emergency surgery midway through the semester.

Even though the semester is over, team Physical Presence Pet is continuing work on the project. Zheng built a mobile app that allows users to customize their Luceals and take photographs with them, and the team is already thinking about how they’ll incorporate it in initial discussions about commercializing Luceal. The future’s not just in reach for this ETC team — they’re already touching it.