CMU students exploring a smart sleep pillow: would you use sleep tracking without a wearable?
We’re a few CMU students playing with an early-stage idea for a smart sleep pillow, and we’re trying to figure out whether the core assumption makes sense before building too much hardware.
The basic question is:
Would you use sleep tracking if it came from your pillow instead of a watch, ring, or mattress sensor?
A lot of sleep trackers require wearing something, while mattress-based products can feel indirect. Since your head and neck are in contact with the pillow for most of the night, we’re wondering if the pillow could be a better sensing location.
The rough idea is a pillow that can do two things:
- Track sleep-related signals from the head/neck area（We use EEG）
- Gently improve comfort or support during the night
Some things we’re considering:
- sensing around the back of the head or behind the ears
- detecting breathing / pulse-related signals from the neck area
- adjustable cervical support
- small internal air cushions to slightly change support
- white noise that adapts to sleep state
We are not trying to lock someone’s head in place or make a medical device. The goal would be something people can sleep on naturally.
We’re not selling anything. Just trying to pressure-test the idea before going further.