A graduate student from Scotland was feeling a bit lonely one day. Her boyfriend works on offshore oil rig six months out of the year, you see, so she doesn’t get his company as much as she’d like. So what did she do? She invented a device that would allow them both to hear the others’ heartbeat from miles away. You can say it now, “AWWWW!”
Joanna Montgomery, now an interactive design graduate, created her invention Pillow Talk for her final project. “Mostly what I wanted to do was create an awareness of the other person and a sort of feeling of presence. Because if you live with someone and you’re with them, you can come home and you can sit in the same room and not necessarily talk to each other but there’s still that connection.”
Pillow Talk isn’t just a random recorded heartbeat in a pillow, it’s a real-time transmission of your boyfriend or girlfriend’s pulse. How does this work? Montgomery designed a chest sensor (and/or a ring) for both people to wear that wirelessly transmits your pulse. It’s heard through a pillow insert (that softly glows to let you know they’re there) so you can hear it when you’re in bed.
She said it was a long process getting it made. “I had to take it from being something I made myself with basic electronics and bits of cable hanging out to becoming a finished product,” she said. “I realized that technology has become very literal, everything involves a screen. You can Facebook someone, or text them, or email them, but it’s quite two dimensional and there isn’t any real richness or depth behind it.”
Montgomery is still putting the final touches on the design but thinks it should be in the market by the summer. Take a look at the preview commercial.
You can find more information on Montgomery’s website or the product site.
(via Yahoo)
