Humans started sleeping in primitive beds about 10,000 years ago, and throughout history, mattresses have been stuffed with a wide range of materials, including reeds, hay, wool, straw, and feathers. The first coil spring mattress was patented only 150 years ago, with foam rubber mattresses, waterbeds, and airbeds following in its footsteps. Now, mattress technology has moved beyond “hardware” into the digital age. Companies are launching “smart” beds—mattresses that ensure your comfort by tracking your sleep patterns and making adjustments throughout the night to optimize your rest. Here are a few players to watch in this emerging technological field.
Dreaming for Data
The Kingsdown Smart Sleep System offers a mattress designed to monitor movement, understand pain, ease pressure, track sleep patterns, and wake someone from a deep sleep. Using a person’s sleep data, the mattress is able to self-adjust to provide a more restful sleep. The data collected by the bed can be accessed via a mobile app, allowing users to learn more about their sleep patterns and how they can be improved.
Brilliant Bed
Luna smart mattress covers were designed to optimize a person’s nightly rest by warming their beds, tracking their sleep, and waking them up at the right time. Luna co-founder and CEO Matteo Francheschetti sees the cover as a natural progression of mattress technology. “Luna helps people be aware of what happens during the night while they sleep, and it helps those who may be having trouble getting a full night’s rest reach higher levels of comfort,” he says. Talks have already begun with big players in the lodging industry about making Luna a presence in hotel rooms.
Perfect Positioning
Another mattress with pressure-sensing capabilities is the ReST. Using technology originally developed for use by people with serious spine injuries, ReST can sense when someone is moving or when too much pressure is being put on a particular body part, and will automatically inflate or deflate air chambers located within the mattress to maximize comfort. Lloyd Sommers, general manager of ReST, says, “Instead of you moving, the bed is doing the moving for you, which prevents you from waking up and allows for better overall sleep.”
