BREATE AND HUG HAPTIC PILLOW
We introduce Breathe and Hug a pillow designed to relax both through breath guidance and hugging a haptic companion.
The inspirations comes both from traditional vibration therapy technics like when singing bowls are positioned on the back of the experiencer and from modern art work like the Humanoids piece by Ernesto Neto.
A Communal Device For Relaxation and Connection
The piece is meant to have two pillows made. We have only one working at the moment.
Manual Mode = Hugging Mode
the pillow vibrates as the user hugs it more intensely. The mode is made possible by a flex sensor that was placed on the part of the pillow that faces the body.
Automatic Mode = Guided Breathing mode
On the automatic mode the pillow can be strapped on the back of the neck and the vibration motor matrix does an irradiating gesture and ramps up in Intensity to encourage inhale and ramps down to encourage exhale.
Next Steps
1- Do some user testing, finding out how these two different modes feel to different users.
2- Build an enclosure to house both pillows in between uses.
3- Add different animations such as: the more intense the hug the more frequent vibration pulses become, guided breathing with pulses instead of with continuous vibration.
Haptic Explorations
1. HELLO VIBE MOTORS
1 - What part of the body do you use to feel sensation?
fingers.
we tried a couple different delay speeds between one and off. 1000 100 50 and 25.
In the 25 it didn’t seem like different ons and offs.
Bellow that it only seemed like a soft version.
2- Alternating vales for motor On and motor Off
We tried making it HIGH for longer and just having it LOW for 50 milliseconds and it gave us a wave like feel.
50 milliseconds HIGH and 1000 gave an extremely subtle effect.
3- The FADE example
There is more of a soothing quality to this one.
You can kind of feel the motor speeding up.
We changed fade out from 5 to 10 and it gave a much subtle vibration. Maybe could be used for really sensitive parts of the body.
The delay times controls how frequent the increments happen and the brightness controls the start value.
2. MOTOR ARRAYS
We first put it in the forearm
some felt stronger than others
closing the eyes makes a lot of difference
having the delays at 1000 milliseconds
Putting it in the chest makes a difference and it feels soothing and relaxing.
Putting in the chest it seems to resonate.
While putting it in the table feels like an control board.
We then went to simulating rubbing on the chest by activating and deactivating each of the 4 motors.