Are you feeling down? Do you need a hug?

Does it matter whether or not the hug is performed by a wooden machine that doesn't actually have any emotions?

Petri Eskelinen has designed a wooden hugging machine that is built to hug the user back when it gets embraced.

Users simply need to step up onto the hugging platform, hold onto a pair of wooden handles and then swing their arms around into an embrace around the device. As they do so, wooden arms attached to the handles will swing around the user and give them a nice big hug. Not only that, but the contraption is manually-powered, so as long as you're on the platform, you can hug it as long as you want.

"The viewer must trust the construction and lean on it, then he/she is able to reach the handles. The viewer can turn these handles as if he/she would be hugging someone. The mechanism will in turn hug the viewer in the same way with the mechanical arms which have three turning points," says Eskelinen on his website.

The device is the perfect way to pick yourself up before another long day, after getting some bad news or if you simply need a hug when no one else is around.

Via: Gizmodo