Ommie

 

 Ommie Robot

Ommie is a robot I custom designed and developed at Yale University for researching the intersection of social robotics and mental health support. Ommie’s core interaction is to support deep breathing (the practice of extending one’s inhales, holds, and exhales) for the purposes of anxiety reduction. This practice has been shown to calm the autonomic nervous system and reduce anxiety states. Ommie supports the practice by mechanically expanding and contracting in the cadence of deep breathing while a user places their hands on the robot.

Early usability testing with the robot shows a quantitatively significant reduction in anxiety state measures after use, as well as high rankings from users on the robot’s calming, approachable, and engaging qualities. Users additionally report Ommie’s haptic and audio interactions as providing a focusing effect, leading to faster calming than other methods they have used in the past. They also describe a companionship element to using Ommie while deep breathing, reminiscent of the motivational effect of meditating in groups or with another person. 

In later work, I developed a dataset and machine learning algorithm for the classification of deep breathing phases. This technology can be used to support multiple personalization and adaptation functionalities on the Ommie robot. In current work, I have received funding from the Semio Community nonprofit in order to work with the renowned robotics hardware development firm Ologic on development of the v2 of the robot, to prepare for longitudinal home deployments.