Last year, Nintendo announced that it would be launching a new line of products aimed at improving quality of life, and on Friday. a new patent for a Nintendo sleep tracker was leaked online.
The Nintendo Sleep Tracker is the Company’s First Quality of Life Product
Nintendo’s late President and CEO Satoru Iwata spearheaded a “Quality of Life” campaign last year where the company announced that it would be producing a sleep monitor. This leak shows that the company is that much closer in achieving the goal of that campaign.
The Nintendo sleep tracker is meant to monitor people while they sleep, as the device sits next to the person’s bed while they sleep.
“Fatigue and sleep are themes that are rather hard to visualize in more objective ways,” said Iwata in an interview last year. “At Nintendo, we believe that if we could visualize them, there would be great potential for many people regardless of age, gender, language, or culture.”
The Leaked Patent Reveals How Exactly Nintendo’s Sleep Tracker Will Work
In one of the diagrams of the device, it shows a smartphone-like device sitting on a table while displaying relevant information. Nintendo’s sleep tracker appears to be composed of a smartphone-like device and a dock, though it’s not exactly clear whether the dock is the sleep tracker while the generic looking phone is meant to be the user’s phone, or if it’s one device.
Nintendo announced earlier this year that it had partnered with DeNA, a Japanese mobile developer, so it’s likely that DeNA will be developing a smartphone app for Nintendo’s sleep tracker, allowing a user to use their smartphone in tandem with the dock to track sleeping habits.
The device itself will make use of both sound and image data by using a microphone and camera. Once the data is collected, it will be sent to the cloud in order to be processed into meaningful data. Nintendo’s sleep tracker has multiple sensors that also record data about temperature, pulse, breathing rate, and more.
Keep a Lookout for More Details Soon
Unfortunately, the diagrams are written in Japanese, so there are still many details that are unclear. Nintendo is teaming up with ResMed, a US health company that creates equipment for treating sleep disorders, and hope to have the Nintendo sleep tracker out by 2016.
