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Nintendo has reportedly filed for multiple patents late last year, including one for a sleep monitor device which will monitor the user’s emotion during eye-shut time.
The multiple patent applications were remarked by a NeoGaf user going by the name “Disorientator”, who posted them on the gaming forums. They are date October 29th, 2014 and only their abstracts are in English.
The most interesting one refers to a device similar to an alarm clock, which has a docking station, a host of sensors and a projector. Despite the main text being in Japanese, the drawing show a couple of interesting features – such as the fact that its projector is aimed towards the ceiling, and it also has another piece which should be put on the floor.
According to device’s abstract, it is able to record information necessary to asses a user’s emotional stance, such as capturing the sounds he/she makes with the use of in-built microphone and images with a front camera. The interesting part comes with the terminal will detect this only when it is in standby state – which will happen during user sleep hours, amongst others.
But this would not be entirely accurate, since if the device would not have other uses, it would probably just be left on standby for most of the time, including periods when users are actually awake. So the terminal also relies on a host of other readings picked up by its sensor, such as temperature and pulse rate. This will somehow be related to its built-in projector, although the abstract wasn’t really clear about its use.
The filing didn’t mince words though when it came to the ultimate use of the information. He physiological readings it gets will be transmitted to a server, which will compare it with other user information and then send back feedback regarding the user’s quality of sleep.
The device is probably part of Nintendo’s “Quality of Life” initiative which it announced last year, where the electronics developer stated its plans for creating a sleep monitoring device, but has not given any updates on the status of the project afterwards. This is one of the last projects which Nintendo started under the leadership of chief executive Satoru Iwata, who passed away two weeks ago after losing the battle with an extremely rare form of liver cancer.
Image Source: nintendoeverything.com
