Controlled Positional Therapy to Reduce Snoring
Sleep position has been proven to strongly influence snoring activity. Purpose of the project is to exploit this principle and to develop an "intelligent" bed to reduce snoring by actively influencing the sleeping posture of the user. Particularly, the bed will be fully autonomous enabling to track snoring in real-time and to react in an interactive way by adapting the mattress shape and providing vibratory stimulation to influence the posture of the user.
Snoring affects a wide portion of the common population and can have serious consequences on sleep quality and health for both the snorer and the bed partner. Often, especially when sleeping alone, we are not aware to snore and, without a clinical investigation, objective information is usually missing. Snoring can be only an indicator of more serious disorders as sleep apnea, which, if untreated may lead to severe health problems. Thus the monitoring of snoring activity and an early detection of sleep related breathing disorders is very important.
Sleep position has been proven to strongly influence snoring activity. However, most of actual approaches limits to the use of rigid bodies fixed on t-shirts or belts to make uncomfortable lying supine. Generally these approaches are effective but appear very disturbing and users tend to quickly abandon such therapies. With our project we want to implement this principle in an "intelligent" bed able to monitor snoring activity and reduce snoring by actively influencing the sleep posture of the user.
The intelligent bed will work totally autonomously, monitoring and detecting user's snoring activity in real-time, and choosing the adequate positional intervention based on the actual state of the snorer. Such intervention includes changes of the mattress shape combined with vibratory stimulation to directly influence the posture of the user (e.g. lifting the upper body ) or to induce him to move (e.g. turn on one side). Additionally, the bed will record snoring sounds of the subject overnight. The information recorded will be automatically analyzed offering to the user a quantitative tracking of his snoring during sleep. The resulting diary will allow knowing better own condition and detecting indicators of sleep apnea such as snoring, gasping, choking, gurgling sounds, and periods of breathing cessation. Our objective is to give to the user a simple system, integrated in his bed, able to automatically detect indicators of sleep apnea and, eventually, suggest to take this first step and to consult a specialist.
Media Links
external pageRTS – Info/Science-Tech.
Broadcasted on 15.05.2018
external pageETH News for Industry
Published on 02.08.2017
Publications
F. Crivelli et al. “Actuated Bed for Closed Loop Anti-Snoring Therapy, 2017 International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR). IEEE, 2017.
E. Wilhelm, et al. "Ein intelligentes Bett zur Verminderung von Schnarchen." Somnologie 21, S2 (2017).