A Smart Pillow for Health Sensing System Based on Temperature and Humidity Sensors

Abstract

The quality of sleep affects the patient’s health, along with the observation of vital life signs such as body temperature and sweat in sleep, is essential in the monitoring of sleep as well as clinical diagnosis. However, traditional methods in recording physiological change amidst sleep is difficult without being intrusive. The smart pillow is developed to provide a relatively easy way to observe one’s sleep condition, employing temperature and humidity sensors by implanting them inside the pillow in strategic positions. With the patient’s head on the pillow, the roles of sensors are identified as main, auxiliary or environmental temperature, based on the differences of value from three temperature sensors, thus the pattern of sleep can be extracted by statistical analysis, and the body temperature is inferred by a specially designed Fuzzy Logic System if the head-on position is stable for more than 15 min. Night sweat is reported on data from the humidity sensor. Therefore, a cloud-based health-sensing system is built in the smart pillow to collect and analyze data. Experiments from various individuals prove that statistical and inferred results reflect normal and abnormal conditions of sleep accurately. The daily sleeping information of patients from the pillow is helpful in the decision-making of diagnoses and treatment, and users can change their habits of sleep gradually by observing the data with their health professional.