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Headline: Smart Speaker Soothes Babies And Tracks Their Breathing Using White Noise

Caption: University researchers have developed a new smart speaker that lets a device use white noise to both soothe sleeping babies and monitor their breathing and movement. Developed by researchers at the University of Washington, BreathJunior plays white noise and records how the noise is reflected back to detect breathing motions of infants’ tiny chests. When the researchers tested BreathJunior with five babies in a local hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, it detected respiratory rates that closely matched the rates detected by standard vital sign monitors. “One of the biggest challenges new parents face is making sure their babies get enough sleep. They also want to monitor their children while they’re sleeping. With this in mind, we sought to develop a system that combines soothing white noise with the ability to unobtrusively measure an infant’s motion and breathing,” said co-author Dr. Jacob Sunshine, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the UW School of Medicine. To make things easy for new parents, the team made a system that could run on a smart speaker that replicates the hardware in an Amazon Echo. “Smart speakers are becoming more and more prevalent, and these devices already have the ability to play white noise,” said co-author Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and the director of the UW computing for health group. “If we could use this white noise feature as a contactless way to monitor infants’ hand and leg movements, breathing and crying, then the smart speaker becomes a device that can do it all, which is really exciting.” White noise is a combination of different sound frequencies, which makes a seemingly random soothing sound that can help cover up other noises that might wake a sleeping baby. To use white noise as a breathing monitor, the team needed to develop a method to detect tiny changes between the white noise a smart speaker plays and the white noise that gets reflected back from the infant’s body into the speaker’s array of microphones. “We start out by transmitting a random white noise signal. But we are generating this random signal, so we know exactly what the randomness is,” said first author Anran Wang, a doctoral student in the Allen School. “That signal goes out and reflects off the baby. Then the smart speaker’s microphones get a random signal back. Because we know the original signal, we can cancel out any randomness from that and then we’re left with only information about the motion from the baby.” BreathJunior tracks both small motions — such as the chest movement involved in breathing — and large motions — such as babies moving around in their cribs. It can also pick up the sound of a baby crying. While BreathJunior currently uses white noise to track breathing and motion, the researchers would like to expand its capabilities so that it could also use other soothing sounds like lullabies. The team will present its findings October 22 at the MobiCom 2019 conference in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Keywords: University of Washington,UW,Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering,computer science,UW Medicine,medicine,pediatrics,white noise,soothing,sleep,babies,breathing,monitoring,Alexa,smart speakers,Amazon Echo,Google Home,internet of things,feature,photo feature,photo story,tech,technology,science,design,baby,newborn,safety,new parents,monitor,health

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