Abstract
We present the design concept Lokahi: a soft, interactive, wearable device which aims to promote a pleasant, intimate closeness sensation between two people. Its shape is designed to encourage hugging, while the embedded electronics –through pulsating coloured lights– lets the users to visualise their own heartbeats, so that they are aware of each other’s current affective state. Lights hues mix according to the synchronisation of the two heartbeats, possibly producing a single hue: such shared visual feedback can potentially be used in relaxing and meditative exercises, where two people try to synch their own heartbeats.
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Notes
- 1.
See supplementary video material at link https://vimeo.com/427703690.
- 2.
Analog inputs on ATmega328 range in [0, 1023].
- 3.
The current value of L was set to 100 due to memory limits of the chip.
- 4.
This was done generating random noise on both sensors.
- 5.
LEDs hue is based on three values in [0, 1] respectively for red, green and blue.
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Acknowledgments
This paper was funded by Regione Lazio, project +me: motivating children with autism spectrum disorders to communicate and socially interact through interactive soft wearable devices (Progetto di Gruppo di Ricerca finanziato ai sensi della L.R. Lazio 13/08).
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Özcan, B., Sperati, V. (2020). Lokahi: The Wearable Body Pillow to Foster an Intimate Interaction Between Two Users Through Their Heartbeat Awareness. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Posters. HCII 2020. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1294. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60703-6_54
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