Design of Haptic Interfaces for Therapy

Written by: Cati Vaucelle, Leonardo Bonanni and Hiroshi Ishii

Comments: Zach

Summary:

This paper deals with devices that may be able to be used for therapeutic purposes. Therapeutic holding has been something that has worked for a few disorders because it feels like hugging. One case would be an autism child wearing a heavy blanket to stop them from having panic attacks. They came up with four different prototypes.

1. "Touch Me": a flexible motor array in a soft enclosure that would be used to touch certain parts of the body for therapeutic purposes.
2. "Squeeze Me": would be use to promote human contact with patients who would get to overwhelmed if having to deal with a real person. The hugging-like sensation could keep them from having panic attacks, or other issues that they deal with with their disorders. It could also be worn outside of a clinic area without people taking notice to it because the pressure bladders go inward towards the body and should not be noticeable under a shirt.
3. "Hurt Me": this would be used for those patients that usually mutilate themselves when dealing with a disorder that they have. This would give them the pain sensation that they need without actually hurting them self. This would also give a closer relationship between therapist and patient so the therapist realizes the pain their patients feel and need to be ok.
4. "Cool Me Down": has a temperature all the way around the wrap that will help patients self-administer a cooling sensation for sensory grounding.

These prototypes were presented to a few therapists and they gave their approval that these devices would be good to test on patients as long as there were safety measures being met. The "cool me down" may not be able to be very portable due to the motor needed to run it, but the others would be able to. They also thought "Hurt Me" would need a new name in order to be used. Now they just need to actually test these prototypes on patients in order to see if they actually work as intended.

Discussion:

I think this is a great idea, especially the "Hurt Me" so people will not mutilate their bodies in order to feel the pain they need with their disorder. If these therapeutic prototypes will work for certain people with disorders to keep them from having panic attacks or violent tendencies then I think this is something we should begin working on. Future work would obviously be actually testing these things on patients and recording whether or not it actually worked for them. It's something to really think about and hopefully be able to produce so people with disorders can qualm their needs without harming themselves or others.