However, many people have problems focusing on and modifying their breath. Which begs the question, how can breath sensing and virtual reality combine to help people feel better?

What if breathing training could be as simple as navigating a virtual world, moving a ball around a beautiful beach, breathing fire like a dragon or just sitting and watching your breath in a fun way?

Origination

Since the beginning of JunoVR, I've been inspired by how real time respiration feedback could be integrated with a visual experience. Microphone based breathing detection was too susceptible to environmental noise, belt stretch sensors take a lot of time to set up, require calibration and don't correlate that well with actual airflow.

This led to experimenting with building a breathing sensor for virtual reality that would be both quick to set up and highly correlated with airflow out of the mouth.

The Sensor

The sensor mounts onto the side of the Oculus Rift on a flexible arm which allows for adjustments. This is an image of an early prototype. The sensor is thermistor based and primarily measures airflow leaving the mouth or nostrils though it's possible to detect inflow as well with more work on the software.