Tech Idea for People with Sensory Issues (and the environment)?

While not necessarily unique to autistic people, sensory issues, both in terms of hyper and hypo-sensitivity, are something many people face on a day-to-day basis. For many autistic children and adults, the wrong smell can be an unwelcome distraction at best and can be genuinely distressing at worst. The wrong perfume, food smells, someone else's cigarette smoke (or vape!) on clothes can present very real issues. Quite often, a spray of fabric refreshing spray is not going to cut it and may even compound the problem.

Cue, the FreshUp device by Bosch, or Robert Bosch GmbH, to be more precise. This summer, the German engineering and technology company released a handheld device that uses plasma technology to refresh fabric and remove unpleasant odours. About the size of a smartphone, this device has been designed with portability in mind, presumably for the benefit of those who travel with work (remember those days?). The manufacturer claims that the FreshUp has been designed to prolong the amount of time that clothes need between washes, to reduce the environmental toll, both in terms of wear and tear of fabrics and machine washing or dry cleaning. It doesn't, however, clean clothes.

Image source: Bosch, 2021

This blog post is no way intended as a review as I've not tested it. However, the development of such devices, presuming more will eventually come to market, could present a new way of managing smell-related sensory challenges. Reviewers of the FreshUp online suggest that a quick swipe over clothes creates an initial odour but dissipates pretty quickly. They also say that it is pretty effective at getting smells out of the fabric. For someone with an aversion to smells in the environment, this could be an option.

Assistive technology doesn't always need to be specifically developed for an intended purpose. Sometimes, more mainstream devices can be repurposed, often presenting more affordable and discreet opportunities. In this case, Bosch's FreshUp is not particularly cheap at around £250 (around $345 (USD)) when going to press but, as this market develops, it could be interesting to see where this idea goes.