Robot guides children through breathing exercises during allergy testing

Key takeaways:

• Children were participating in oral food and drug challenges.
• Ommie led children and caregivers in deep breathing exercises.
• 50% of the interactions between children and Ommie were spontaneous.

SAN DIEGO — Tests for food and drug allergies can be scary for children. But a robot developed by the Yale University Social Robotics Lab that guides them through deep breathing can ease their anxiety, according to a poster presented here.

“They developed a robot that was initially used for mental health purposes to reduce anxiety,” Aiden Chun, a student at Bergen County Academies in Hackensack, N.J., told Healio at the 2025 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology/World Allergy Organization Joint Congress. “We wanted to apply it to a clinical setting.”

Chun was mentored by Stephanie Leeds, MD, MHS, an assistant professor in pediatric allergy at Yale School of Medicine.

Aiden Chun

The Ommie robot is shaped like a ball and made of a flexible material. Users place their hands on the ball. As it expands and contracts, audio cues tell users to breathe deeply in and out along with Ommie in a pattern resembling box breathing.

Ommie also features a head-like attachment with a pair of displays resembling eyes that are programmed to be expressive. In previous studies, Chun said, patients compared using Ommie with performing meditation with a partner.

“That was something that was pretty interesting,” Chun said.

In the current study, ten children (six boys; mean age, 6.5 years) aged 3 to 11 years participated in oral food (n = 6) and drug (n = 4) challenges at Yale New Haven Hospital. A researcher who was present in the room when the children used Ommie during challenges recorded the patient experiences.

“They were very young patients,” Chun said. “It can be a very stressful moment for them when they’re going through these challenges. The anxiety levels can be high. So, having this robot that essentially walks them through a deep breathing exercise and calms them down was very helpful for them.”

The children interacted with Ommie an average of 4.5 times (range, 1-11) during each encounter, with 50% of these interactions being spontaneous and 80% of the interactions completed.

“These kids loved it,” Chun said.

Breathing cycle completion rates varied among the children aged younger than 4 years, but all the children aged older than 4 years completed all the breathing cycles.

“That point was actually pretty interesting, something that we didn’t expect,” Chun said.

Caregivers also used Ommie with an average of 1.3 interactions (range, 0-6) per encounter, with 80% calling the experience enjoyable and reporting that they would like Ommie to be an option during future visits.

“Since it was proof of concept and a pilot study, we want to expand to a larger number of patients,” Chun said.

The researchers also want to compare Ommie, which is not commercially available, against human-guided breathing techniques or other distractions that families may use to mitigate anxiety during testing, he added.

“That can include family-provided tablets, televisions, things that are more accessible and seeing how well our robot compares against them,” Chun said. “How well does the Ommie robot stack up against that and see whether or not the robot would be an option that they would choose.”

For more information:

Stephanie Leeds, MD, MHS, can be reached at stephanie.leeds@yale.edu.