Problem: Many people today experience an enormous amount of stress due to the fast-paced and competitive rhythms of a society that tries to survive under the uncertainty that Covid-19 brought. Stress constitutes a psycho-emotional condition that most of the times breaks out through the human body using various forms: headaches, stomach pains, fast pulses and breathing, sometimes even inertia. Many people turn to medicine drugs in an effort to find a way out, neglecting the therapeutic effects that a simple touch may have on their body. Alternative ways of medicine and well being such as pain and stress and management through meditation, therapeutic massage and reflexology are being neglected by the variety of people, especially in West societies. Sometimes, a simple touch and push between your eyes, may prove to be enough to stop a strong headache or force yourself to release significant stress and feel asleep.
Solution: For my final project, I propose the design and computation of an e-bandage that can be wrapped around different areas of the human body (head, stomach, arm) and offer different vibrotactile sensations, that can either calm stress, treat pain or even induce an alert. In this project, I am about to explore different effects of vibrations and their impact on the human body, by playing with factors such as the spatial configuration and distance among the vibrators, their intensity, frequency and location upon the body. I intent to use two arrays of LRA vibration motors, where different combinations of motors are going to be activated for different haptic patterns. A touchpad matrix is going to be used for choosing which effect should be executed.
Components:
- 8 x LRA vibrating motors
- 8 x Transistors to increase power output of the motor
- 8 x Adafruit haptic motor drivers or 8 x SparkFun Haptic Motor Driver (?)
- conductive thread
- optional: Flora microcontroller or LilyPad arduino