Is being able to dream lucidly something you’ve, well, dreamt about? There’s a new Kickstarter project that might be able to help with that. Meet iBand+, a new kind of wearable that’s not so concerned about what you do while you’re awake, but deeply interested in where you go when you’re asleep. Described as a “dream-inducing wearable,” the iBand+ claims to enable users to “experience lucid dreams’ while helping them sleep better and easier.
Comprised of an iBand+ headband, pillow speakers, and a smart companion app, this set hopes to address the sleep and wakefulness problems that plague some 70 million U.S. adults. And it all starts with your dreams. After all, the iBand+ team says, “dreams are the best and most authentic VR experience; a world with no rules and consequences.” And apparently, lucid dreaming in particular can help improve artistic creativity, problem-solving, and language skills. Looks like some people really do their best work while unconscious.
So how does the iBand+ work? The headband plays a crucial role in monitoring and analyzing users’ brainwaves, body movement, heart rate, and body temperature as they sleep. To check for lucid dreaming, the headband keeps tabs on the REM stage of sleep, playing audio-visual cues as soon as users hit this most complete stage of rest. By sending subtle external stimuli of light patterns via the headband’s LEDs and emitting sound from pillow speakers, iBand+ claims it can make sleepers aware that they are dreaming without waking them up. Moreover, iBand+ promises to help users achieve a deeper restful state by playing music that intelligently adjusts to various sleep phases.
But of course, like any good wearable, the iBand+ also tracks your fitness levels, even while you’re not doing anything physically active. The headband promises that its data can help provide “a glimpse into the user’s physical and mental state that could disclose potential health and sleep problems.” You’ll be able to access all this information via the iBand+ smart app, which not only “recommends suitable audio-visual techniques for lucid dreaming, sleep improvement, and smart alarm applications,” but also allows users to track their sleep progress over time, “displaying daily health and sleep information in an easily interpretable format with graphs and ratings.”
“[The] iBand+ is not a passive tracker. It is an active sleep and dreams inducer that monitors and analyzes information on your brain and body throughout the sleep cycle, and accurately generates audio-visual sensory stimuli to help you sleep and dream,” said Samir Raut, the creator of iBand+. “We truly believe that iBand+ will help enhance people’s quality of life.”
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