Acupressure is an ancient healing art based on the traditional Chinese medicine practice of acupuncture. With acupressure, you put pressure on acupoints on your body. Massaging these points regularly can help release muscle tension, alleviate diseases symptoms and promote holistic wellbeing. We aim to educate users to locate acupoints, connect symptoms with acupoints, as well as promote daily practice for a healthier lifestyle.
Aria Xiying Bao, Davide Zhang, Meijie, Yubo Zhao @ MIT Reality Hack 2022
What it does
Our product provides hand-based acupoints AR visualization and rich interactive guidance to make the acupressure process easy and informative. It also reminds users of practicing acupressure according to their daily health status. For example, notification would pop up when the device detects poor sleep quality to remind the user to massage the point that reflects liver to alleviate dizziness.
How we built it
We used Oculus Quest 2, Zed Mini, and Leap Motion to develop the interaction system. Zed Mini is a depth camera that includes stereo-IMU, inside-out tracking and spatial awareness. Leap Motion is an in-air controller that can track the hand gesture of the user. The software was implemented in Unity3D. With the accurate bone mapping from leap motion’s hand-tracking features, we mapped the acupoints AR visualization and user interface on the left hand. Davide led the technical prototyping, Yubo, Aria and Meijie created the user experience and visual design.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Hacking hardware together
After we encountered development issues with Hololens2 and MRTK, we decided to switch gears and hack an AR device ourselves with Oculus Quest, Leap Motion and Zed Mini. We were able to figure out the new pipeline quickly and realize the product in a very limited timeframe.
Expand our project beyond technical prototyping
Using our background in design we are not only satisfied with making a viable product. We pushed our concept further to imagine how it can make meaningful impacts in everyday scenarios and solve actual user problems.
Maintain a high visual quality
We created all customized materials and UI assets to make sure the visual design is tailored to the specific interactions we prototyped. We added artistic interpretation to the user interface design rather than just achieving the basic functionality.
