Contactless Sleep Disturbance Attribution via Radar and Environmental Sensors
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Individuals face challenges in determining the cause of nighttime awakenings and improving sleep quality due to the difficulty in identifying short-lived disturbances, as existing technologies lack effective contactless monitoring and attribution capabilities.
Innovation Solution
A contactless sleep tracking device equipped with low-power radar and environmental sensors that monitor movement and environmental conditions, such as light and sound, to attribute awakenings to specific events and provide users with insights to improve sleep quality.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If contactless monitoring is implemented to detect sleep disturbances, then the ability to identify causes of awakenings is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple sensing capabilities (radar for movement detection, environmental sensors for light/sound/temperature monitoring) into a single integrated contactless sleep tracking device. This merging approach enables comprehensive disturbance detection and cause attribution without requiring multiple separate devices, thus improving measurement precision while managing device complexity through unified design.
Solution Approach 2:
The device performs multiple functions including sleep state detection, movement monitoring, environmental condition sensing, and disturbance cause attribution. By making the device universal and multi-functional, the patent improves detection accuracy across various disturbance types without proportionally increasing complexity, as a single device handles diverse monitoring tasks.
2Loss of information
If environmental sensors are added to identify disturbance causes, then information completeness is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges radar-based movement detection with environmental sensing capabilities (light, sound, temperature) into a unified system. This combination allows the device to capture both physical movement and environmental conditions, providing complete information about disturbance causes without requiring separate specialized devices for each sensing type.
Solution Approach 2:
The device segments disturbance detection into distinct sensing modalities (movement detection via radar, environmental monitoring via dedicated sensors). This segmentation allows each component to specialize in specific detection tasks, improving overall information completeness while managing complexity through modular functional division.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The device effectively identifies the cause of awakenings, allowing users to take preventative measures to enhance sleep quality by providing actionable information on environmental factors contributing to disturbances.
Implementation Method 1
The contactless sensor may use low-power continuous wave (CW) radar
Data Source
AI summary
Various systems, devices, and methods for contactless sleep tracking are presented. Based on data received from a contactless sensor, such as a radar sensor, determine that a user has entered a sleep state. A transition time may be determined at which the user transitions from the sleep state to an awake state. An environmental event, based on data received from an environmental sensor, may be identified as occurring within a time period of the transition time. The user waking may be attributed to the environmental event based on the environmental event occurring within the time period of the transition time. An indication of the attributed environmental event as a cause of the user waking may be output.