This intelligent pillow guarantees that you won't miss an emergency alarm or a phone call while you sleep.

      A new intelligent pillow may help deaf users avoid sleeping through emergencies.

      Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have created a smart pillow sleeve aimed at assisting deaf individuals in waking up to significant nighttime notifications. This innovation is more practical than flashy, especially when compared to the annoyance of missing a phone call, and the severe consequences of failing to respond to a fire alarm.

      Unlike standard smart pillows, the researchers designed a sleeve that fits over an ordinary pillow, allowing it to be placed inside a typical pillowcase. The sleeve vibrates in response to alarms or calls linked to it.

      What issue does it address?

      This project was initiated based on feedback from the Deaf community, who expressed that existing alert devices placed under pillows are frequently too bulky and uncomfortable for sleeping. As a solution, the team created a thinner electronic textile sleeve that incorporates four small haptic actuators within a yarn-like framework.

      Each actuator measures just 3.4mm by 12.7mm, and the electronics are compact enough that users shouldn’t notice them while sleeping. Therefore, this safety device is both useful and comfortable.

      How it can potentially save lives

      The sleeve connects to a smartphone via a microcontroller, which can then wirelessly link to household alarm systems. When an alert occurs, the pillow vibrates vigorously enough to awaken the user, employing distinct patterns to indicate various types of notifications. This allows a hearing-impaired user to be alerted to a fire alarm, a burglar alarm, or an incoming phone call.

      This feature provides a thoughtful layer of functionality. The intention is to not only wake the individual but also to offer enough information for them to understand the reason behind the wake-up.

      Researchers note that the yarn utilized in the sleeve has already successfully undergone durability testing, including multiple washes, indicating that they regard this as a legitimate product concept rather than merely a laboratory demonstration. The findings were presented at the ACM CHI conference in Barcelona, and the team is currently seeking an industrial partner to assist in bringing this product to market. Supervisor Theo Hughes-Riley referred to it as a significant advancement towards more inclusive emergency alert systems for deaf and deaf-blind individuals.

      Vikhyaat Vivek is a technology journalist and reviewer with seven years of expertise in consumer hardware.

      OpenAI’s recent update transforms ChatGPT into a more efficient work assistant.

      OpenAI is enhancing ChatGPT’s functionality beyond simple question-answering, making this transition quite clear. With workspace agents, ChatGPT is evolving from a chatbot into a comprehensive work assistant.

      What are workspace agents in ChatGPT, and how do they function?

      OpenAI has released a major update to ChatGPT’s image capabilities, now dubbed ChatGPT Images 2.0, which marks a significant evolution in making AI-generated visuals useful. The new system emphasizes reasoning and accuracy rather than just generating images.

      A humanoid robot recently ran a half-marathon faster than the current world record holder.

      While this may not seem remarkable initially, it is a notable accomplishment given that the fastest robot in last year's Beijing humanoid robot half-marathon completed the race in two hours and 40 minutes. According to the Associated Press, this year’s winning robot finished the half-marathon in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, easily surpassing the human world record of 57 minutes recently established by Jacob Kiplimo.