INSOMNIA MEDICATION, THE HUGGABLE PILLOW THAT HELPS CURE INSOMNIA

The idea is to go to bed spooning the robot, which is equipped with multiple sensors that tell it how well you’re sleeping

It could be your ideal sleeping companion - intelligent, caring, soft yet firm of body. And it won’t hog the duvet or thrash about in the night.  Researchers have developed Somnox, a peanut-shaped pillow-robot as part of a mission to cure insomnia.

The idea is to go to bed spooning the robot, which is equipped with multiple sensors that tell it how well you’re sleeping (or not). It then uses artificial intelligence to provide treatments, such as adjusting its own artificial breathing to guide yours, or shining a light and playing a lullaby if you have a nightmare.

Somnox is the brainwave of a group of robotics and engineering students from Delft University of Technology.  The device is still in the prototype phase, but the entrepreneurial engineers behind its creation hope to obtain enough funding to take it to market.

The device is still in the prototype phase, but the entrepreneurial engineers behind its creation hope to obtain enough funding to take it to market. The pillow gathers information using multiple high-sensitivity sensors. This data can be used to determine whether you are awake or in a deep sleep.

The device's artificial intelligence algorithm can then interpret that data to create a tailor-made ‘treatment’. It registers your sleeping state and adjusts its sleeping rhythm to a peaceful state.

Somnox then provides a breathing simulation, based on your own breathing behaviour during the night.  The NHS recommends that most adults get a good eight hours of sleep a night.

But with the busy pace of modern life and worries leaving some people lying awake, for many this is an unachievable luxury. The team behind Somnox hope the device will help to ease its users into better and longer nights of rest.

The four students behind the project are industrial designer Julian Jagtenberg, software engineer Job Engel, mechanical engineer Stijn Antonisse, electrical and software engineer Wouter Kooyman van Guldener.  About their product, the group said: "Sleep experts, called somnologists, have helped to develop Somnox.  "Multiple studies have shown that breathing is one of the most important factors of a good night of sleep.

"A slow breathing rhythm can induce a person to sleep in minutes; your heart rate decreases and you’ll become relaxed in minimal time."

COURTESY: SCARLET HOWES AND SOMNOX