Development of Sensate and Robotic Bed Technologies for Vital Signs Monitoring and Sleep Quality Improvement

Abstract

More than 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from chronic sleep disorders, including snoring, bruxism, restless legs syndrome, and obstructive sleep apnea. Clinical diagnosis of severe cases often requires expensive, hospital-based polysomnography testing, while less severe cases may benefit from lower-cost in-home sensor systems to collect physiological data over multiple nights. Remedies for sleep disorders, depending on the diagnosis, range from life style modification and medication prescription to throat surgery. There is a need for unobtrusive, in-bed sensing systems as well as robotic devices to alleviate certain sleep disorder symptoms. Two companion devices are presented. The SleepSmart device is a multi-sensor mattress pad controlled by software to detect heart rate, breathing rate, body orientation and index of restlessness. A spectral analysis module is combined with an event detection module to accumulate nightly reports, signal alarms when appropriate and, in future iterations, modify ambient conditions in the bedroom. A companion project has developed Morpheus, a mattress actuation system to encourage a person to roll over in bed to alleviate snoring based on acoustic sensor data analysis. The combination of the two systems is expected to lead to novel, in-home consumer devices to aid persons affected by mild forms of sleep disorders.