A New Mattress Development Based on Pressure Sensors for Body-contouring Uniform Support

For getting good sleep quality, an improved approach of new mattress development based on the pressure sensors for body-contouring uniform support is proposed in this paper. This method solved the problems of innerspring mattresses that cannot allow body-contouring uniform support, and foam mattresses that cannot provide everybody equal comfort from the same mattress. By the buried pressure sensor array and actuator array in foam layer of a mattress, both are connected to a controller to generate the pressure distribution mapping of a human body on the mattress, then from the data of this mapping, some of the actuators are driven up or down by the controller to generate a body-contouring uniform support. By the aid of mathematical morphology algorithms, user can also choose a different support mode by another wireless controller with touch-screen to accommodate personal favorite firmness of the mattress and to take his tensed mood and pressure off with good sleep until daylight. Moreover, some other homecare functions, such as temperature measurement, sleep on posture correction and fall down prevention, can approach by additional hardware and software as user requirement in the future. KeywordsMattress; Pressure sensors; Body-contouring support; Sleep; Actuator.