FamilyArizing

Project Description

As part of Misha Croes his promotion project “FamilyArizing ” at the TU/e we created a high-fidelity prototype. Being owner and co-founder of a small company then and together with my business partner being known for our complementary prototyping skills (him being expert within the area of 3d printing and me being quite advanced using various analog and digital electronics and having programming skills) we were asked to on a freelance basis create the high-fidelity prototypes for the project.

The idea behind the FamilyArizing project was to create a feeling of connectedness between the mother and her premature newly born. One of the harshest moments when a child and mother cannot be together due to the newly born lying in an incubator, is when the child needs to be reassured when it is restless. The solution that Misha came up with was a combination of a smart cocoon like snuggle in which the baby could be lying and an smart necklace the mother would be wearing.

The snuggle would be able to sense when the child is in distress and is in need of parental attention by detecting certain body movement patterns. It would then send a signal to the necklace that the mother is wearing which has an actuator in it and can mimic the movement of the baby by slightly ‘rocking’. The mother on her turn could then hold the necklace to express her desire to be with her child which is sent back to the snuggle again.

Within the snuggle there are some actuators that then make it contract slightly, restricting the movement space of the baby and giving it a reassuring feeling.

Though Misha already made some prototypes for his project, since he got a grant for it he wanted to step-up and make some high-fidelity prototypes which we then made for him.

The final prototypes where exactly able to do what was conceptually desired of them and consisted of several different parts:
–   A bluetooth enabled pendant which was able to mimic movement of the newly born, able to ‘feel’ if it was held and how much pressure was applied and send this data to a base station.
–   A bluetooth and internet enabled base station for the pendant to charge it and relay communications to a server or snuggle base station
–   A snuggle with several touch sensitive sensors to detect body movements and NiTinol wires to actuate the contraction movements
–   An internet enabled base station for the snuggle to relay communications to a server or snuggle base station

All cases of the prototypes where 3d printed and the ‘brains’ of the project where several Arduino’s in combination with some bluetooth and ethernet adapters.

Created in collaboration with Peter Hermans.