MMRPet: Modular Mixed Reality Pet System Based on Passive Props

We present MMRPet, a modular mixed reality pet system based on passive props. In addition to superimposing virtual pets onto pet entities to take advantages of physical interactions provided by pet entities and personalized appearance and rich expressional capabilities provided by virtual pets, the key idea behind MMRPet is the modular design of pet entities. The user can reconfigure limited modules to construct pet entities of various forms and structures. These modular pet entities can provide flexible haptic feedback and support the system to render virtual pets of personalized form and structure. By integrating tracking information from the head and hands of the user, as well as each module of pet entities, MMRPet can infer rich interaction intents and support rich human-pet interactions when the user touches, moves, rotates or gazes each module. We explore the design space for the construction of modular pet entities and the design space of the human-pet interaction enabled by MMRPet. Furthermore, a series of prototypes demonstrate the advantages of using modular entities in a mixed reality pet system.