The pulsating cushion seems to calm anxiety.

Yukai Engineering, the team behind this strangely adorable product cat tail pillowThe company is back with a unique invention. The Fufuly, another Japanese company’s anxiety-reducing cushion, was unveiled at CES 2023. It features a gentle rhythmical pulsation and is the main therapeutic tool. Fufulys are designed to stimulate the belly and cause slower and deeper breathing. The cushion’s thought-bubble shape was supposed to conjure up the feeling of a puffy of air, but it felt more like a soft and mellow creature laying in my arms. I mistook the cushion’s quiet mechanical sound for a cat’s purr, which CEO Shunsuke Aki assured me was a coincidence.

Yukai Engineering and the University of Tokyo partnered on this project. The University of Tokyo studied rhythmical synchronization between people or between people and objects as they interact with each other. Think how we usually feel calm when we’re holding a baby or pet in our arms — it’s all subconscious. “Using the cushion for just 5 minutes can reduce users’ stress levels and make them more alert,” according to Aoki.

Fufuly offers three operating modes. You have the self-explanatory, “deep” and “regular” modes that suit your calming needs. The third mode uses common relaxation breathing techniques. We couldn’t switch modes on the prototype at the show. Aoki said that his team had already considered a pulsating cushion at the same time as Qoobo’s cat tail pillow. However, in the end they chose to create the latter.

Yukai Engineering also showed Lightony, a cute humanoid bedside lamps that literally nods off after some time. Although the robot’s lifelike head tilts and eye rolling movements may encourage you to fall asleep faster than others, it’s possible that your kids will simply stay awake while playing with it. Lightony can also respond to voice commands, which are processed locally rather than in the cloud. You can tell Lightony to count down when you’re asleep or to say “good morning!” to wake it.

Engadget was told by Aoki that Fufuly would launch in Japan via crowdfunding. The global launch will follow later, but no price has been announced. The Lightony is still in early development, so we will have to return later for an update.