Ambient Intelligence · Spatial Interaction · 2025

Smart Emotional Furniture

Ava is a responsive home environment that reads emotional cues and reshapes light, sound, and projected space—helping a room feel less like a machine and more like a considerate companion.

Contribution
Concept, interaction & prototyping
Team
Yansong Teng · Jason Zhang · Dave Zheng · John Liu
Context
Emerging Tech · Spring 2025
Tools
Blender · TouchDesigner · Projection
View the original project deck

Emotion-aware home · Ava

The room
notices.

Instead of waiting for a command, the environment observes a change in mood, chooses a supportive atmosphere, and transitions around the person.

AMBIENT RESPONSE READY
The full-scale Ava prototype projecting a grassy environment across three walls
STATERESTORELIGHT · SOUND · SPACE

01 · The Opportunity

A smart home can automate tasks. Can it care for a mood?

Living alone and working remotely can blur the boundary between focus, fatigue, and isolation. Most connected homes still wait for explicit commands, placing one more decision on a person who may already feel depleted.

We imagined Ava for that gap: an environment that recognizes emotional signals, responds gently, and keeps the person in control.

Lena, the remote-working persona used to frame the project
PRIMARY PERSONALena Chen, 34

A remote UX designer living alone, managing work stress, fatigue, and a home that often feels emotionally cold.

08:10

Wake gently

Warm light and quiet music soften the transition into a low-energy morning.

14:40

Recover focus

After a stressful meeting, cool tones and low ambient sound create breathing room.

19:20

Shift the mood

Starry projection, warmer light, and guided breathing turn an evening slump into a restorative pause.

02 · Response Model

From subtle signals to a whole-room response

The concept combines several imperfect signals instead of treating one measurement as emotional truth. The system interprets a pattern, selects a supportive state, and changes the atmosphere across multiple channels.

01 · SENSE

Read the moment

  • Facial expression
  • Heart rate
  • Voice tone
  • Behavior
02 · INTERPRET

Estimate a state

  • Stress or tension
  • Fatigue
  • Low mood
  • Need for focus
03 · RESPOND

Shape the room

  • Light and color
  • Music and ambience
  • Temperature
  • Projected environment
A concept panorama showing domestic furniture placed in an open grass landscape
The visual direction removes the walls of the apartment and replaces them with an emotional landscape.

03 · Model Making

Build the room before asking the room to respond

We moved from hand sketches to a Blender environment, then connected visual states in TouchDesigner. A small room model helped us test projection geometry before scaling the experience across the walls of the exhibition space.

01Sketch the scene
02Build in Blender
03Map in TouchDesigner
04Test at room scale
Early sketch of an emotional environment surrounding a person in a room
Early spatial sketch
Blender workspace used to build the responsive home environment
Environment building in Blender
A scale room prototype testing three-wall projection
Scale model and projection mapping
Color projection test inside the physical room model
Testing light and color transitions
TouchDesigner network controlling the generated environment
Visual states and transitions in TouchDesigner
Laptop, microcontroller, and physical rotary controls used during prototyping
A tangible controller kept manual control available during testing

04 · Environmental States

Three atmospheres, three kinds of support

Each mode changes more than a background image. It suggests a different pace, level of stimulation, and relationship between the person and the room.

01

Normal

A calm domestic baseline for everyday activity and gentle focus.

Normal mode showing a warm minimal home interior
02

Space

A quiet, low-stimulation night landscape for slowing down and creating distance from stress.

Space mode showing a star-filled landscape across the room
03

Enjoy

An open grassland that brightens the room and invites movement, play, and recovery.

Enjoy mode showing an open grassy landscape with domestic furniture

05 · Launch

When the prototype surrounded real people

The final installation used three projected walls to make the environment feel continuous. Participants could experience how a shift in light, image, and sound changed the emotional reading of the same physical room.

Final Ava installation with a grassy projection wrapped around the room
Final full-scale layout · projected environment, sound, physical space, and manual control

“The starry sky made it feel like the environment was wrapping me up.”

Ziang Li · Space mode

“I did not notice how tense I was until the music and image slowed down—and I slowed down too.”

Emily Wu · Forest environment

“It felt responded to. That reminder to stop was more effective than opening a meditation app.”

Shuoning Liang · Prototype feedback

06 · Reflection

Care depends on pacing, consent, and context

What worked

Combining light, sound, and projection made the environmental shift more convincing than any single output alone.

Transitions matter

Fast or abrupt changes can feel alarming. Delays and gradual transition animations need to be part of the emotional interaction.

One room, many people

A shared space introduces conflicting signals and needs. Multi-person recognition should never flatten the room into one averaged mood.

Next iteration

Add an emotion diary, manual preferences, adjustable response delay, and clearer ways to accept, tune, or dismiss a suggestion.

AVA · SMART EMOTIONAL FURNITURE

A home should not decide how you feel. It can notice, offer, and let you choose.

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