umaru - A breathing hammock robot
The development of robotics has historically focused on functionality and physical performance for productivity. As our relationship with technology becomes ever closer, how might robots affect us not just physically, but also psychologically?
Umaru is new type of robot, giving a little "blank space" in your daily life. Your tension and stress which we unconsciously feel in our daily life are released naturally by being embraced by a breath of soft, compliant and gentle robot “umaru”.
As seen in the video, a hammock woven with rubber artificial muscles gently rises and falls through the inflow and release of air. As it descends, the tension of the hammock loosens, creating a sensation of the body being softly enveloped.
For details of rubber artificial muscles : Link
As an in-house product designer in Bridgestone's robotics start-up, I had seen a lot of people who showed their surprises or smiles when they physically touched Brigestone's core technology "rubber artificial muscles". That experience gave me a question “What if people psychologically connected with a robot?”, and initiated the project by collaborating with IDEO Tokyo team.
Through wide and cross-boundary researches such as horse-ride, forest theraphy we got an inpiration from different types of connections (between human-being x something else), and key takeaway was to attune yourself to the other's breath. Based on that, rapidly proceeded sketch work, some experiments and prototyping to showcase new robot in an exhibition.
Showcased new interactive robot “umaru” as an experiential space
at International Robotics Exhibition (iREX2023) in Japan.
And then started to unitize the experience so we can easily start deploying to office, airport and some other places as small business start.
rough scale mock-up
Bridgestone Softrobotics team already started to work on some PoC activites in real field by using this unitized model.
Related article : Link
