Apple's sleep and health tracking ambitions extend to blankets and mattresses

Following many suggestions that Apple is bringing sleep tracking to the Apple Watch, the company appears poised to further delve into its Beddit purchase and develop bedding and blankets to monitor vital signs.

Sleep tracking has been coming to the Apple Watch for some time, and Apple even bought the Beddit third-party system for this purpose. But now a new patent suggests that the Apple Watch may not be needed as bedding and a mattress cover could be used instead.

"Traditionally, monitoring a person's sleep or vital signs has required expensive and bulky equipment," begins "Vital Signs Monitoring System," US Patent No 20200107785. It then points out that wearing such equipment makes the person uncomfortable, and so affects the very sleep patterns that it's trying to monitor.

This is specifically a criticism about the kind of sleep tracking that requires a stay in a medical facility, but it also makes points that could equally apply to an Apple Watch. Specifically, it says that currently any kind of worn device tends to be "configured to determine the vital signs based on one type of measurement or mode of operation."

What's more, an Apple Watch or any other device would monitor only the person wearing it. "[These] systems lack the capability of not only monitoring multiple users, but also incorporating the analysis of a first user into the analysis of a second user, whose sleep may be affected by the first user."

Apple's proposed solution, then, is effectively to have bedding that tracks the sleep of anyone lying on or under it. This appears to be an extension of Beddit's system, which saw a strip of material being placed under bedsheets and relaying data to an iPhone.

This extended version appears to suggest that instead of one short strip positioned under one part of a sleeping person's body, at least a larger portion of the bed would become a sensor.

"The monitoring system can include a plurality of sensors including, but not limited to, electrodes, piezoelectric sensors, temperature sensors, and accelerometers," says the patent. "Based on the measured values, the monitoring system can analyze the user's sleep, provide feedback and suggestions to the user, and/or can adjust or control the environmental conditions to improve the user's sleep."

That's you in bed with an Apple mat underneath and an Apple blanket. Look, this is useful.

While presumably adjusting the environmental conditions could involve data being sent to a HomeKit device to alter air conditioning, for instance, the patent refers more to providing a control system for the user. "[A] control panel can include a touch panel and/or display and be configured to interface with the user and/or a computer.... [It] can display heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, respiratory rate variability, user's motion, and user's temperature."

The mat, though, could also act as an electric underblanket and directly alter temperature itself. Apple refers to this as "active heating or cooling," and it would be more intelligent than a regular electric blanket, because it would adapt to more than one person. "[For example,] heating and/or cooling can be used to accommodate the differences in thermal comfort," it says.

So the mat would register a user's body pressing on it, and be able to distinguish between two users. The patent concentrates on very many ways that this can be done, for how it can determine "one or more physiological signals of a user," as well as of multiple users.

The invention is credited to two people at Apple, Shahrooz Shahparnia and Erno H. Klaassen. Both researchers hold multiple patents, but none clearly related to this.

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20 Comments

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

About 4 years ago

Outside of a tiny number of people with particular medical conditions I do not see the point of sleep monitoring. I know if I got a good night's sleep or not. I know if I slept on my arm wrong. I know if I tossed and turned. I don't need an app for that.

jimdreamworx 1075 comments · 21 Years

I wonder if something like this could be used for alerting someone to sleep apnea. Or even somehow communicating with a CPAP.

Having gone for a sleep test, it is harrowing if you don't sleep the way they want you to with all those things hooked up to your head.
I could not sleep on my back the way I was told I had to and spent the whole night pretty much awake. Results inconclusive.

cincytee 420 comments · 18 Years

DAalseth said:

Outside of a tiny number of people with particular medical conditions I do not see the point of sleep monitoring. I know if I got a good night's sleep or not. I know if I slept on my arm wrong. I know if I tossed and turned. I don't need an app for that.

Actually, many people with sleep problems are not aware of it and believe they're sleeping fine. This technology could help with that. Still, the number of people who would likely need continuous monitoring is indeed likely small.

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

I sincerely believe that the root cause of most sleep issues is anxiety and stress. Yes, sleep apnea is a real thing, which I know about firsthand, but many (most?) cases of obstructive sleep apnea are closely related to over eating, excessive alcohol consumption, and a general reduction in physical activity and a resultant poor physical condition. The 24-hour news cycle, constant stream of media coverage, including individually generated media sources like Twitter, corrosive oneupmanship, marginalization, us-vs-them, and everything being a zero-sum game has taken its toll on individuals. Yes, nastiness and incivility has always existed, but it has gotten much worse, and with our inability to wean ourselves off of our connected devices means that it’s now in our face 24 hours a day every day of our lives.

No individual human brain is capable of internalizing all of the woes of the society that they live in, much less a society with constant connectivity and global exposure to the nastiness that is broadcast at full volume all of the time. Sleep is the brain’s way of defragmenting and cleansing itself from the turmoil and stresses of waking life. Unfortunately, we’re simply asking too much of the brain to handle the burden placed on it on a daily basis. With time and aging the cumulative deficits of sleep deprivation accumulate and ultimately the human body, as a system, starts to break down and fail. The loss of restorative sleep is the beginning of a systematic failure in the quality of one’s life. There is only one outcome if the system is not repaired. Measuring the effects and treating the symptoms aren’t going to improve anything unless the root causes are dealt with.

dysamoria 3430 comments · 12 Years

DAalseth said:

Outside of a tiny number of people with particular medical conditions I do not see the point of sleep monitoring. I know if I got a good night's sleep or not. I know if I slept on my arm wrong. I know if I tossed and turned. I don't need an app for that.

There are a huge number of people with sleep disorders that go undiagnosed. Sleep disorders are a silent epidemic. Without monitoring equipment, there’s no way to find out, other than feeling unrested. It took three professional sleep studies for my suspicion of not getting much of any delta (deep) sleep cycles to be proven for disability. And yes, a lack of sleep does kill people (just in case anyone was going to spew anti-sleep BS).

That said, I doubt Apple will be providing the appropriate tools to do a full EEG...

... NOR SHOULD THEY. The diversification has gone way too far (years ago). They can’t be bothered to provide us even reasonably bug-free iOS and Mac OS versions, or power-user hardware (that doesn’t throttle due to poor thermals) affordable by non-plutocrat individuals, and those products are in their original effing market!!

Someone with a focus on the core competencies needs to take over at Apple and cut out the fat before those core competencies are lost permanently, if that hasn’t already happened during the 2013-and-onward era of Apple’s Wall Street and form-over-function obsessions.