Haptic Lullaby: Research & design of a vibrating smart mattress that helps young children sleep

Abstract

Young children often have problems sleeping. Some are afraid of the dark. Or wake up multiple times during the night. Another just does not want to go to bed or lays awake for a long time. Whatever the reason, a lack of sleep makes the children tired during the day. For parents, their child's well-being is important, so they want them to sleep well and be energised during the day. Bad sleep does not only have a negative influence on daytime functioning, but also on a child's cognitive development or behaviour. When a child wakes up often during the night, it influences the well-being of the parents, as they sleep worse too. Lots of parents walk with a stroller till their child sleeps, or drive around in a car. Both involve rhythmic motions and vibrations. Inspired by those phenomena, this graduation project explores if and how vibrations can help young children fall asleep, and a product is designed around that.

The final design concept is the Haptic Lullaby, a smart mattress that uses vibrations to help children between 1 and 5 years old fall asleep. The mattress consists of materials that ensure the vibrations are transported throughout the whole product, while also feeling soft and comfortable when lying down. Whichever position the child prefers to sleep in, they will feel the vibrations. Research indicated that a lullaby-like vibration works best when felt through the mattress. The combination of sound and vibrations together create a sleepy experience. One of the options to start the vibrations is through an app on the parents’ phone. This allows for remote control without entering the child’s bedroom. Another option is to turn on the smart function of the mattress. With sound and movement sensors, Haptic Lullaby measures if the child is awake, and it will turn on the vibration when lots of sound and movement is detected. When everything is quiet again, the vibrations are turned off.

The graduation project’s goal was to design a vibrating sleep product for young children that helps them fall asleep more easily. What was designed in the end was not only the product itself, but a methodology on how to design and evaluate such a product. As there is very little research done on the sleepiness of different vibrations, an initial model of characteristics and factors that determine the sleepiness of a vibration is offered. Also new is the ranking of thirteen different vibrations on their sleepiness. The assumption is formulated that what feels sleepy for an adult does not differ much from what children perceive as sleepy. Research results indicate this assumption to be true. This implies that future design and research on sleepy vibrations can be done with adults instead of children, which is easier to conduct. The graduation furthermore communicates a vision of what possibilities are for a haptic, vibrating sleep product. Its activities contribute to the fields of haptics and child research, and have value for companies who want to design research based sleep products.