This week, the robotics start-up Somnox has launched a crowdfunding campaign to market its cuddly sleep robot that aims to offer people a better night’s sleep.

The start-up was founded by four students from Delft University of Technology, including IDE student Julian Jagtenberg. He came up with the idea of the sleep robot while studying Industrial Design Engineering and the team built a prototype for their minor in Robotics. The sleep robot, with a soft covering that makes it look like a cushion, simulates human respiration. The students had learned from existing research that adopting a peaceful breathing rhythm from someone else can help people to fall asleep.

Production line
“Since then, we have done further development on the sleep robot. Fifty test sleepers spent time using it and around 5,000 people provided feedback on the concept,” explains Jagtenberg. “It is hoped that the crowdfunding campaign will make a production line possible. That will be a major step towards our dream of helping 100,000 people get a good night’s sleep by 2025 thanks to the world’s best natural sleep solution,” says Jagtenberg.

More information
The Somnox sleep robot is available to pre-order on Kickstarter until 14 December. For more information, please click here.

Update: the Kickstarter campaign proved very successful. Somnox got 200 percent funded in 30 days. The company now can start the production process!