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Wash. U. grads create device for feeling more rested with less sleep
Calling all over-involved, under-rested Washington University students: two Wash. U. grads are developing a sleep optimization system called Chrona. Like Fitbit or Jawbone, it uses your smartphone to track sleep patterns. It goes a step further, however, by also utilizing varying sound frequencies to improve the quality of your sleep.
The initial idea came from co-founder Zimin Hang while he was in AP Psychology as a high school student. The concept for the physical version of Chrona was created two years ago by Hang and co-founder Ben Bronsther in their entrepreneurship capstone class (a.k.a “the hatchery”) at Wash. U.
“The thought process was that when people get sleep studies done, they always have to wear those extremely intrusive EEG brain caps, and so we tried to develop a way to get rid of the need for the cap and make it so that we could track the same data just by laying down on a pillow,” Bronsther said.
Unfortunately, the initial model required a dry EEG electrode, which is so expensive that the product could never reach store shelves. The co-founders were unfazed, however: they invented an accelerometer and a gyroscope to begin tracking sleep and then investigated emerging research for ways to actually enhance their clients’ sleep. They came across acoustic brainwave entrainment: when the system detects deep sleep, it triggers low-frequency relaxing sounds (sounds in the delta range) and when it detects lighter sleep, it emits higher-frequency sounds (sounds in the alpha range).
The product itself is a rectangular piece of memory foam, about 1/2-inch thick, inserted by the user between pillow and pillowcase. It is embedded with pressure sensors to detect movement and speakers to emit the varying frequency sounds for either “deep sleep boost” or “perfect wake-up.” Volume is controlled by the sensor, which can tell where a user’s head is on the pillow.
Many existing sleep aids offer “smart alarms” already, which track sleep depth and then wake you up at or before your set alarm time, in the lightest stage of sleep. Even though this should theoretically leave users feeling more refreshed, surveys show that many people object to being woken up before their set alarm time (even if they were in the stage of sleep from which it is easiest to wake up).
While Chrona maintains the traditional smart alarm feature, the new “perfect wake-up” feature will not wake you up before your set alarm time, but simply emit the high frequency sound waves to send you to a lighter sleep at the time when you wish to be woken up.
The variety of features on the app, changeable at any time by the user, include simple sleep tracking, deep sleep boost, the traditional smart alarm, perfect wake-up or even a combination of the smart alarm with the perfect wake-up for a super smart alarm. The app generates a sleep score out of 100 each night and can then quantify how much the score improves after a certain amount of time.
“We basically look at varying amounts of light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep tracked throughout the night and the patterns in your sleep cycle. Then, based on that and some other data that we gather, we give you a score out of 100, kind of like a grade, of how good your sleep was that night,” Bronsther said.
In the future, Bronsther and Hang plan to use this brainwave entrainment technology to program a meditation feature into the pillow. It would likely be a half-hour program with a guided meditation through varying frequency sound waves.
For those worried about sleeping on what seems to be a piece of electrical equipment, Bronsther explains that the sounds running through the pillow are a fraction of what it would be like to sleep with your cell phone in bed with you. Most of the processing for the system takes place in the smartphone, through the app.
There are only six units in existence today, and they are being used in a pilot study at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Chrona is now engaged with a top-product design firm based out of Boston called Altitude, which will take the fully functioning prototype, turn it into a final consumer product and set up manufacturing capabilities with factories abroad. The first units will likely be shipped in October.
Today, April 16, is the start of Chrona’s Kickstarter campaign, which has a goal of $50,000. Early bird prices are available for those who wish to purchase Chrona through Kickstarter, ranging from $80 – $100. The product will be sold at $170 once it reaches stores in the fall.