SqueeZzz

SqueeZzz
TUI Midterm Project Sketch
Kevin Lessard, Michael Hemati, Sofía Solar Cafaggi, Kristina Hart
 
Idea:
Most people look at their beds for only two reasons, sleeping and that other thing.  We wanted to focus on making the sleeping experience better by utilizing the interaction with long body pillows.  By having the Pillow/Bed adapt to the user’s needs through simple input/output mapping, the sleeping experience will be more comfortable and unique to the individual.
 
The target users for this interaction are people who:

• take naps
• sleep by themselves
• want to cuddle
• do not feel well (e.g. cramps, chills, headaches, etc.)
• Notably, we are NOT targeting couple sleepers
• This has the potential for more development later.

 
The main modalities of interacting with the pillow will involve the amount of body contact (area) with the pillow, the orientation of the pillow, and the intensity of contact (squeezing).
 
 
Functionality:
To wake up the Pillow/Bed interfaces, the user will “fluff” the pillow. Once the pillow is awake, the user can raise the pillow’s temperature by squeezing it with his arms. The temperature-squeeze interaction is constrained to only the top half of the pillow, where the arms are located; squeezing the pillow with your legs/knees should have no effect on the temperature.  The temperature-squeeze interaction will have an hour timeout at steady state to prevent excessive heat.
 
When the user has all four limbs touching the pillow (large surface area of contact), the bed will sense the body’s position and cinch up on the non-pillow side to provide more of a “cuddle effect”.  Conversely, when the user removes some limbs from the pillow the bed settles back towards a neutral position.
 

• Squeezing
  • Force of squeeze →  temperature change
  • Number contact point/Surface Area →  change in bed contour
• Fluffing - Turns on the device
• Folding - Turns the interactions off
• Stroking - Programmable variable (music volume, light intensity, alarm controls, etc)

 
Sensors
We envision using either a pressure or temperature sensor map in the pillow/pillow case.  Either of these sensors oriented with a high enough density should be able to sense touch and location of arms, legs, and the body.  In addition, the orientation of the pillow with respect to the body and the bed needs to be sensed.  This could also be determined by pressure or temperature sensors in the bed.