Dive is a project to explore and induce lucid dreams using mobile devices.
Lucid dreams are dreams in which you are aware that you're dreaming, and can control the setting and plot of the dream. Lucid dreaming has the potential to serve as a "personal holodeck" for practicing skills, exploring scenarios, treating mental health disorders, and exploring an inner world.
The Dive project aims to make lucid dreaming more accessible and easier. In collaboration with the Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Northwestern, we've developed an Android app which adapts a technique previously used to induce lucid dreams in a sleep lab by presenting sounds during REM sleep.
A particular challenge in using this technique is detecting REM sleep without specialized lab equipment. We are testing whether algorithms using data from a smartwatch, or even just the motion sensors in a phone placed on the bed, can be used to detect REM and deliver the sounds at the correct time.
If you have an Android phone, you can try Dive here!