Sony to Get Into the Pillow Business?

pillow

Ok, ok, the title above might be a bit absurd and/or a stretch, but then again, it might not be. Let me start from the beginning. Thanks to the USPTO, we’ve learned that Sony has applied for a new patent application that puts electrodes in a pillow. In recent years, thanks to devices like the Fitbit and Jawbone Up, tracking one’s cycle throughout the day has became quite the fad which offers some great feedback on our daily habits. The more elusive part of this new craze has been the ability to track one’s habits at night and, though many of the devices offer options to track your sleeping patterns and other behaviors while you sleep, none of them are quite perfect.

Enter Sony’s patent that will place electrodes in a pillow. While the idea of pillows that have sensors to monitor your sleep are nothing new, Sony is looking to advance the technology that removes the glue and sticks the sensors in your pillow. Instead, Sony wants to place the sensors inside of your pillow wirelessly. The use of the pillow with built-in sensors also goes beyond simple monitoring of your sleep pattern and extend to alarms that are based on your brainwaves. An example Sony gives is an alarm clock that monitors brain waves to detect when you enter and leave REM sleep. This would allow you to set an alarm clock that only wakes you after you’ve entered REM sleep, perfect for those who want a power nap.

So do we think that in two years down the line, your Best Buy or Sony store will be selling pillows? Probably not, but for those who’ve followed Sony’s business expansion in the recent years, you’ll note that the company has heavily invested in the medical field and currently provides their LCD technology and camera sensors to be used in different medical equipments and cameras. Creating a pillow for medical use by leveraging Sony’s wireless expertise would not be a far stretch.

Discuss:

Do you think this is a technology that Sony will actually use?

[Via USPTO]