A new glove device aims to help people with trichotillomania, or compulsive hair-pulling.
Senior undergraduates are developing a glove-based sensor that tracks hand motion and flexing, combined with a smartphone app that tracks behavior over time. The glove incorporates flex and other sensors along with a gyroscope that sense when a hair-pull has happened. The glove sends data to the app, which keeps track of “no-pull” streaks.
“The reward for every week you don’t pull your hair could be monetary or something as simple as a congratulations on the app,” says Linda Liu, a student in Rice University’s Brown School of Engineering.