MIT is developing a sleep tracker that measures location with radio waves

The research institute MIT has developed a way to measure people’s sleeping behavior with radio waves. The person’s posture can be measured by reflecting the wireless signals. The applications are mainly in the medical field.

MIT has explained his find on its website. It is a device that can be mounted on the wall, and with which radio waves are then transmitted. According to the American research institute, the waves are reflected by objects in the room, and the change in the reflected patterns indicates the position in which the person is sleeping. To determine this, the researchers use self-developed algorithms that make use of breathing patterns, among other things.

According to the researchers, the developed system, called BodyCompass, is a privacy-friendly way to study sleep patterns. It does not require cameras or devices that have to be worn by the user. MIT mainly sees applications in the medical field; By analyzing sleep patterns, bedsores can be detected more quickly, or symptoms of Parkinson’s disease can be measured.

The researchers have shown in experiments that in most cases the system correctly indicates the subject’s posture. With a week of sleep data, BodyCompass was able to find out the posture in 94 percent of the cases. With less data, the precision declined; with 16 minutes of sleep data, the system was correct 84 percent of the time.

MIT will present the system on September 15, during the UbiComp 2020 conference. The system has already been used in the past for research, including insomnia.