Proposal of sleep-promoting robot using vibratory pressure and sound stimulation

In recent years, lack of sleep is becoming a serious problem in modern society since it causes accident, overwork death and depression. Among the several factors, difficulty getting to sleep is one of the big reasons. In this paper, sleep-promoting robot is proposed as an aid to this problem. The basic concept of the robot it to shorten the sleep-onset time by giving two types of external stimulation, sleep-promoting method giving vibratory contact pressure based on respiratory waveform during sleep and sound stimulation characterized by heart rate variability during sleep to the human. Therefore, the proposed robot could be better choice as the solution of insomnia compared to current methods since it has a possibility of promoting sleep in the short run, convenient and not swallowing the pills. The paper presents not only the concept of the proposed sleep-promoting robot but details such as evaluation method and experimental setup configuration. Here, comparison of the sleep-onset time and comparison of the time change in sleepiness are proposed as evaluation method. Electroencephalograph is selected as the measuring equipment since it is possible to quantify the sleepiness. The appearance of the robot is decided to be pig-like since it correspond the condition of having the image of cuteness and the rarity in the daily life at the same time.