Ever fall asleep while still wearing your headphones? Maybe you were on to something.
Kokoon Technology has announced its new Relax headphones that are meant to be worn while you sleep. No, it’s not designed to help you to listen to Wagner’s Ring Cycle in one marathon session. The goal is to help you sleep better, by monitoring your vital signs through a mobile app and providing aural content to gently glide you into slumber.
According to Kokoon, the associated phone app features “techniques, tracks, and concepts developed with sleep professionals to optimise the chances of falling asleep.” Many of these techniques use a form of talking therapy known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. The company claims that CBT is the “gold standard treatment for insomnia with a proven success rate.”
Will people really be able to sleep with Kokoon’s headphones wrapped around their heads. There’s the rub, so to speak. The company says the patented design helps the headphones adapt to the shape of the wearer’s head. The fabric permits air flow through the ear cups for additional comfort. And the ear cups can be detached and washed.
The Relax headphones include sensors that measure the wearer’s brainwaves, motion, heart rate, and environmental tracking. The app then uses that data to adjust the content to the individual. According to the company, “as a wearer falls asleep in a headphone, audio changes in response, fading out the content and introducing white noise to mask out disturbances.” The system tracks what works for the wearer and then personalizes the content for a more effective experience.
Of course, there’s no practical way to test the sleep-inducing effectiveness of the Relax headphones during a five-minute demo at CES. This could be one of those new technologies that sounds good in theory, but runs into all kinds of roadblocks in real-world applications.