Credit: CC0 Public Domain Select Comfort's latest bed promises to adjust to your sleep patterns throughout the night, including warming the foot of your bed before you get in, changing position when it senses snoring and waking you gently in the morning.
Select Comfort Corp. is capitalizing on the emergence of sleep science as an area of health research and the rise of mobile technology in developing its Sleep Number 360 smart bed.
Shelly Ibach, Select Comfort's chief executive, called it "a revolutionary product that redefines what people should expect from their bed."
Select Comfort, based outside the Twin Cities, specializes in air-filled mattresses that are adjustable to what it calls a person's "sleep number." In a sign of the importance of technology to the new product, the company unveiled the bed at CES, the electronics and consumer technology trade show that started Tuesday in Las Vegas. It won a "Best of Innovation" honor in home appliances at the event.
The trade show gives out 28 such awards.
Select Comfort's new bed uses sensors to measure key biometric variables including breath rate, heart rate and body position among others. The technology, introduced in 2014, takes the data to produce what the company calls a "SleepIQ score," indicating quality of sleep on a 1-to-100 scale.
The new bed uses that information to automatically adjust the comfort of the bed throughout the night. The new technology can also establish a pre-sleep routine be gently warming the foot of the bed before bedtime - research shows people with warm feet fall asleep faster - and suggest the optimal wake-up time based on sleep cycles.
Some Sleep Number 360 bed models can raise the head portion of the bed seven degrees to offset snoring.
Kelley Parker, senior product manager for Sleep Number, said the more data the application collects the more fine-tuned the sleep experience will become.
The bed also goes to work during the day. It can be paired with certain fitness trackers and smart thermostats. And people can use the app to add daily activity and diet data and chart their sleep history. The program can then make suggestions on your sleep routine.
Data from a fitness tracker paired with the application might adjust the firmness of the mattress based on whether a person worked out during the day. Information gathered from a smart thermostat can help set ideal room temperature for sleeping throughout the night.
As an indication of the growing conversion of sleep science and technology, CES opened a new Sleep Tech marketplace for this year's show. It features exhibitors including the National Sleep Foundation and Cambridge Sound Management and Beddit Ltd., each promoting their own sleep-tracking technology.
Select Comfort will start selling the new beds in the first half of this year.
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