Anti-Anxiety Pillow Comforts You By ‘Breathing’ To Guide You To Take A Beat
Image via Yukai Engineering / PR Times
Hug pillows are nice and all, but they can’t reenact the sensations of a good cuddle with someone you love. Why? Well, for one, they don’t breathe.
But now, your comfort cushion won’t just be fluff, for the lack of a better word. A new robotic pillow called ‘Fufuly’ was unveiled at the CES 2023 show in Las Vegas, and it was even named as an Innovations Award Honoree there for precisely the reason that makes it akin to holding someone who takes your stress away. Fufuly was invented by Yukai Engineering, a Japanese firm reputed for developing adorable robot companions.
The pillow heaves in a similar pattern to a 2022 study by the University of Bristol, in which scientists wanted to develop a huggable item to ease the nerves of students ahead of a test. Between options that purred, simulated heartbeats, and replicated breathing, participants preferred the one that “breathed.”
Fast forward about a year later, and Japanese researchers have presented a breathing pillow based on their own findings. Fufuly is built with “deep breathing technology” that’s rooted in the phenomenon of entrainment, in which a person’s bodily functions adapt to harmonize with an external source—much like the way your breathing accelerates or slows down when you listen to music.
Fufuly breathes with an optimal rhythm and depth in tandem with research by the University of Tokyo that showed the best conditions to induce relaxation.
The cloud-like pillow—filled with a soft velour for the most huggable squeezes—is meant to bear the shape of “a puff of exhaled air,” though we’d like to think of it as the living manifestation of a breath of relief.
Fufuly can be held to tide you through a stressful day at work, when you’re resting at home, or to help you fall asleep, according to its creators.
As mentioned earlier, there’s scientific evidence that breathing pillows will help you take a, well, breather. In the case of the scientists at the University of Bristol, they found that snuggling one can create an effect tantamount to that of meditation.
Anxiety is the most common mental disorder, and the World Health Organization estimates that at least 301 million people are living with the condition. When the Bristol researchers proposed their breathing pillow, they suggested that such devices can make anxiety relief much more accessible to the general public.
As for Fufuly, it arrives in three modes: regular and deep settings, as well as one centered around common relaxation breathing methods.
Fufuly’s inventors are now proceeding with making the cozy cloud ready for sale.
[via SoraNews24 and Business Today, images via Yukai Engineering / PR Times]
