An IoMT Architecture and Reciprocity Protocol for More-Than-Human Interaction

This paper presents a methodological approach for enabling more-than-human interaction through the integration of an Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT) architecture and a protocol-level interaction model termed the Reciprocity Protocol. While conventional environmental IoT systems prioritise low-bandwidth telemetry and representational engagement, they are poorly suited to interactions requiring temporal coherence and sustained perceptual coupling with remote ecological processes. To address this gap, we propose a dual-node IoMT architecture that supports continuous, high-fidelity audiovisual streaming alongside environmental sensing, combined with an interaction protocol that ensures human input modulates rather than overrides environmental signals. The approach is instantiated in an interactive system prototype used as an evaluation testbed. Technical probes and qualitative observations indicate that the architecture maintains low-latency feedback and that the Reciprocity Protocol reliably preserves environmental primacy, encouraging shifts from control-oriented interaction toward negotiated, temporally attuned engagement. The paper contributes a transferable interaction methodology and system blueprint for ecological and more-than-human HCI that foregrounds infrastructure and protocol design over representational interfaces.