Do You Need a Hug?

Compression vests are specialized garments designed to apply gentle, evenly distributed pressure to the wearer's torso. They are commonly used as a therapeutic tool to address various sensory processing and sensitivity issues, anxiety, stress, and impulsive behavior. These vests work by providing a comforting, reassuring sensation that can help individuals regulate their sensory experiences and emotional state.

The principle behind compression vests is rooted in the concept of deep pressure stimulation, which has been widely recognized for its calming and organizing effects on the nervous system. The pressure applied by the vest activates proprioceptive input, which refers to the body's awareness of its position and movement in space. This input helps individuals feel grounded and connected to their bodies, promoting a sense of security and stability.

Several commercial compression vests are on the market, and they typically use a small hand pump for inflation. This is fine for many cases, but an engineer that goes by the name Tevian realized that automating the process could not only enable some interesting new capabilities, but could also make these vests accessible to those that are disabled, who could not otherwise inflate them on their own.

With this idea in mind, Tevian developed a custom device called Auto-Inflate. Designed to have a relatively small footprint so that it can be concealed in a pocket, Auto-Inflate can automatically inflate a compression vest and has some compute power to enable advanced functions like timed inflation-deflation cycles. Auto-Inflate was developed to work with the commercial product called The Squease Vest, but Tevian believes this device could be easily adapted to any other compression vest.

An air pump and solenoid are used to inflate and deflate the vest under the control of an ESP32 microcontroller. This hardware, and the supporting components, were assembled on a custom PCB. A second PCB was designed to handle the user interface — a small OLED display screen and an encoder to provide the Auto-Inflate with user inputs. A pressure sensor was leveraged to determine when the inflation process should be stopped. The hardware is housed in a custom case to protect the components while they are stowed away in a pocket. The system is powered by rechargeable batteries and has been shown to be capable of fully inflating a vest in about ten to fifteen seconds.

Auto-Inflate is still very much a work in progress, and Tevian is actively exploring ways to make the device better. Adding additional sensors is being explored, as is swapping out the microcontroller for a board such as the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense for its integrated Bluetooth radio and inertial measurement unit. That Arduino could also come in handy if Tevian decides to run down the idea of using a machine learning algorithm to determine when and how to trigger vest inflations based on sensor measurements — it was suggested that this type of system could stop a problem before it gets started.

While everything has been working according to plan, an emergency shutoff button was added that physically disconnects the hardware from the power source just in case of a problem. And this is an important feature that should not be overlooked, as Tevian notes that the Auto-Inflate can generate enough pressure that it could severely constrict breathing in a small child.

The Auto-Inflate may be something of a niche device, but this different way of approaching the inflation process could have a lot of utility and benefit many people. In particular, putting artificial intelligence to work to stop symptoms before they have a chance to get started is intriguing. However the acronyms might get confusing — the AI-powered AI? In any case, this is a great idea, and we certainly hope that Tevian will continue work on this project and see it through to completion.