Imperceptible sleep monitoring bedding for remote sleep healthcare and early disease diagnosis

Abstract

Abstract To satisfy the increasing demands for the active healthcare and remote diagnosis of neurological, cardiovascular or oral disease, we proposed a technical solution for imperceptible wireless sleep monitoring. Daily-used beddings like pillows were filled with a fluffy pile of self-powered triboelectric body-motion sensors with a down-like or feather-like structure. Taking advantages of the highly-sensitive and reliable fractal pile structure, mechanic energy related with body motions can be converted into electrical signals, which can not only be distinguished as various locomotive activities, including turning-over, breathing, mild snoring, serve snoring or teeth-grinding etc., but also be utilized to driving wireless signal-sending microchips for cloudy servers or cellphone. For more than 31 volunteers, a monitoring pillow without any cable-connection to human body can provide a much closer sleep-stage estimation results to that of professional polysomnography (PSG), than the commercialized actigraphy. Such a wireless monitoring system was endowed with softness, common appearance and good air permeability and zero cable-connection, which can provide a comfortable remote sleep healthcare and disease diagnosis for sleep surveillance of the elderly at home, aiming to reduce the chance of sudden death during sleeping.