A good night’s sleep is one of the key elements for good health. In fact, good sleep has been proven to have many health benefits, such as improving concentration and productivity, maximizing athletic performance and even decreasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and strokes. As many people are now sleeping less, and sleep quality has decreased as well, many companies are busy developing sleep aid technologies. Here, we go over some of the latest innovations in sleep technology.
Beddit’s sleep sensor:
Beddit is a sleep sensor composed of a thin rectangle that is placed under your sheets. From there, it monitors numerous parameters such as sleep, including different sleep stages, heart rate, respiration rate, and more. It has some of the best sensors on the market, and it even connects to your Nest to help tweak your environment for better sleep. You don’t have to turn it on every night, just go to bed and trust that it will be monitoring. It also connects to your smartphone, so you can upload your data and let your doctor know how you’re sleeping.
Sleep Number’s smart bed:
Sleep Number introduced a revolutionary new product in 2017, the Sleep Number 360™ smart bed, which is the most significant innovation in the company’s 30-year history. This smart bed can sense and automatically adjust its settings to keep both partners sleeping soundly throughout the night. It automatically adjusts to your sleep position in real-time, gently contouring to side, back or stomach profiles to make you comfortable. It also detects snoring and adjusts the position of a snorer by raising his head slightly (7 degrees) to help temporarily alleviate the symptoms of common, mild snoring in otherwise healthy adults. The bed can also warm your feet, to help you fall asleep faster!
2breathe’s sleep-inducing breathing app:
2breathe uses smart, connected technology to deliver sleep-inducing breathing exercises. A sensor worn around the torso picks up the user’s inhale and exhale movements sending it to an iOS app via low energy Bluetooth. The app transforms, in real-time, the breathing into tones that gradually guide the user to prolonged exhalation and slow breathing. The process continues until the user falls asleep. Once the app detects that the user is asleep, 2breathe automatically shuts off and generates a report showing the falling asleep process. 2breathe’s breathing app won the CES 2017 Top Innovation Award. The demo can be seen in this video:
Nightingales’s sleep acoustics wall plug:
While Nightingale’s sleep acoustics wall plug looks like a simple wall plug, it is quite interesting. The wall plug is made of two units that are placed in different parts of the room. These units will “wrap your bedroom in a blanket of sound” tailored to the specific room acoustics. This can all be controlled with an app. The wall plug can also be controlled with Amazon Alexa and connect with Nest for all of you smart home people. When you wake up, the app can even fetch weather and traffic information. You can customize your sound experience, via the app.
Kryo’s app-controlled mattress cooler:
One of the most common reasons for a poor night’s sleep is overheating. Overheating can be a problem with any material, and is more noticeable when sleeping on foam. A cooling mattress such as the ISOLUS 2.5 Inch Ventilated Gel cooling mattress is one solution. But, rather than buying a new mattress, a mattress topper could be an even better solution.
Kryo has developed a patent-pending, cooling mattress topper. The Kryo Sleep System uses a water-based system to control the temperature of the mattress. It can be controlled by your smartphone, and after 10 nights of data, the app can determine the ideal temperatures and adjust them throughout the night, according to your sleep cycles. Kryo can easily connect to various apps, such as NEST, Fitbit and Jawbone to enhance sleep quality. The diagram below shows all the Kryo’s features.
Emfit QS’s contactless sleep tracker:
Emfit QS (Quantified Sleep) is a powerful solution for contactless tracking of sleep, used by professional triathletes, cyclists, runners, skiers and other endurance athletes. The device is automatic, and the flex-material sensor pads are unobtrusively installed under a mattress. Emfit co-founder and CEO Heikki Raisanen explains in their press release that:
“Emfit’s newly upgraded sensors can be embedded into queen and king-size mattresses with enough sensitivity and accuracy to isolate the heart and breathing patterns of the primary user when two people share a bed… Emfit’s secure cloud-based IoT platform and API allow the bed to become truly part of smart home IoT. Benefits include remote monitoring and data sharing at the user’s discretion.”
Emfit QS provides comprehensive reports about a number of parameters such as physical recovery, heart rate, sleep quality (i.e. stages of sleep) and time, and even autonomic nervous system balance. Emfit recently exhibited their new sleep tracking technology at CES 2018.
Conclusion:
According to a report published by Persistence Market Research,
“The [sleep aid] market is projected for a value of around US$ 80.8 Bn by the end of 2020. During this six-year forecast period, the global market for sleep aids will expand at a moderate CAGR of 5.7%. With growing demand for medications that help quality sleep, the market for sleep aids is witnessing steady growth.”
From mattress innovations to smart home apps, the bedroom is going to get its fair dose of technology in the years to come. This is likely to be something that we will all sleep on!
Featured image courtesy of Sleep Number.
