What is a Smart Bed

Smart beds are among the most talked-about objects at technology innovation fairs. They can be used in medical environments but also by individuals, whether to monitor children remotely, check the health of the elderly, or just improve sleep. The technologies are still quite expensive, but they are also promising.

Principle and functioning of smart beds

A smart bed is usually linked, via Wi-Fi waves and integrated sensors, to an application on a tablet or smartphone. It records data throughout the night, which can then be read by the user in the morning.

This technology is mostly expressed in the form of sensors, which record: heart rate, breathing rate, body heat, and movements made. Originally, these sensors were often simple strips that were slipped over or under the mattress.

However, the mattresses now incorporate sensing zones and become active in many areas. Different functions exist, such as a mattress that warms or cools the sleeper in order to maintain an ideal body temperature for sleep (ideally, the temperature adapts to each side of the bed for double mattresses), detects snoring, in order to modify its position by a few degrees to clear the airways, adapts to your position in sleep thanks to integrated air chambers, registers the presence or not of a person in bed.

Note: if you don’t have the desire or the budget to invest in a smart bed, you can turn to simple sensors to be installed under or on the mattress.

Who can use a smart bed?

Smart beds are useful in many situations in life.

In the medical sector

It allows you to monitor a patient’s vitals without disturbing them with frequent interventions and without having to move, thanks to a central console gathering information from several bedridden people. For example, a fall or a rise in temperature triggers an alert.

For parents of young children

There were already mattress toppers that signaled cardiac or respiratory arrest in response to sudden infant death. Now there are beds that tell parents when the child has fallen asleep (and can be turned off remotely, from a tablet or smartphone, the integrated light) or the fact that he or she has left the bed. And, to reassure also the little ones (and not only their parents), the bed also triggers a night light when the child gets up to go to the bathroom.

For the relatives of isolated elderly people

The smart beds record vital constants (sleep duration, breath, and heartbeat), but, more importantly, they send an alert message when no one has been in the bed for too long. If an elderly person falls to the ground and cannot go to bed, his or her relatives will be warned before too much time passes.

For all sleepers

A smart bed allows you to analyze your sleep cycles in order to improve them. They can wake you up (by vibration or by progressive light emission) at the most suitable time for you. Some even include sleep aids adapted to your personal rhythms (via smart accessories to be placed on the bedside table). Mattresses with a heating function can be triggered remotely (so that your bed is at the perfect temperature when you get home from your evening out) or take into account your usual rhythm of life to trigger automatically.