Transcriber: Eriko Tsukamoto Reviewer: Denise RQ
Today I'm going to talk about sleep.
We humans spend almost 30% of life in sleeping.
Sleep is important to refresh your body, reorganize your memories,
and insufficient sleep may lead to daytime sleepiness
and lack of concentration on your work.
And too much insufficient sleep may leave your immune system weaker,
and you can catch a cold easily.
If you look at the market, there are so many sleep-related goods,
like comfortable pillows, futons, some sleep-inducing music CDs,
and more recently, there are some high-tech sleep monitors available.
And if you check your smartphone mobile apps,
there are so many sleep-related applications
on the smartphone apps market.
And usually these sleep-related apps are given a top 10 ranking
in the healthcare categories.
Demand for comfortable and better sleep is getting larger and larger.
But, by the way, my specialty is not sleep.
I am a part-time orthopedic surgeon treating bones and joints,
not cosmetic surgery, by the way.
But mostly, I dedicate my work to regenerative medicine
to try to make organs from cells,
instead of using other peoples' organs for transplantation.
And we're also developing a robotic system
cooperating with companies for cell cultures,
and also we're developing a kind of 3D bio-printer.
With this printing system, we can fabricate
living 3-dimensional construct from cells.
So, our future goal is to make patients' own organs from patients' own cells.
And to expand my research eyes,
I really love to explore many gadgets and new technologies,
such as quad copter or some activity logger and work out.
I couldn't finish this program, but already I'm thinking about
whether these technologies can be applied to our research field.
And recently, I was really amazed by Kinect.
It's a kind of 3-D scanner and motion sensor, relatively inexpensive,
plus, it's released as a game controller from Microsoft
but recently thanks to many hackers and Microsoft,
many programmers can program their own Kinect program.
So, one day, I [invested] in Kinect with my kids.
I noticed this Kinect can be used as night vision.
Even in the darkness, the system is still tracking your body parts
and captures the night image without turning the light on.
So I had the idea to use Kinect as a sleep monitor.
Because most of the smartphone sleep apps
cannot capture your sleeping image,
-- only replay your sleeping sounds and some graphs from motion sensors.
I put my Kinect in my bedroom like this, and made software as a night recorder.
And even covered with a futon, the system still tracks your body,
even if you turn the lights on.
And I also made an analog software.
This is replaying my own sleeping image and detecting my body movements.
The yellow line below is showing my body movement one night
and the red line shows my sleeping sounds -- unfiltered sounds.
But seeing this data, I found that I am a heavy snorer.
My wife already told me, but I was never convinced.
(Laughter)
And also, I found these small gaps between my sleep cycles.
I was afraid that I stopped breathing while I was asleep - must be sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea syndrome is a kind of abnormal sleep,
when you stop breathing while you sleep
mostly [due to] your tongue dropping
and obstructing your airway,
That induces insufficient oxygen supply to your body.
And usually your sleep partner or bed partner will tell you
you are a heavy snorer,
or that you stopped breathing while asleep
and ask you to go to the hospital.
But unfortunately, I was kicked out of the bedroom by my wife,
and I have to sleep alone.
And one of the standard treatments for sleep apnea
is this 'Continuous Positive Airway Pressure System (CPAP)."
This is good [works] for some certain kinds of sleep apnea,
but if you want this CPAP system in Japan,
you have to go to the hospital and put many sensors on your body
and maybe you have to stay one night in the hospital.
But it's troublesome.
So I decided to make a robotic arm connecting Arduino and Kinect,
collaborating with students.
And I put many short lenses on top of the arm,
including breath detection sensors and motion sensors.
And when users sleep, the system
- including Kinect and short-range sensors -
monitors users, and when sensors detect
some events such as too much loud snoring or sudden silence,
the arm is activated
then wipes the user's face gently (Laughter)
to try to let the user know,
and helping the user to breathe well again.
I think this system is useful for singles like "otaku" with metabolic syndrome
because they have to sleep alone with no one to tell them
that they have stopped breathing while they sleep.
Sleep apnea may lead the user to daytime sleepiness,
lack of concentration at work, or to fall asleep
while in important business meetings.
Or, may induce the user to some serious car accident.
And also there are many reports on how sleep apnea may increase
the risk of hypertension, brain stroke, heart failure,
and maybe die young.
So, I think this system may help these guys
and may improve their quality of life and health.
We're still optimizing ideal stimulation methods, not to awake users,
but to let users breathe well again
and also expecting users to turn their body position to side sleep
because side sleeping can reduce snoring and sleep apnea.
Gravity may remove the tongue from the blocked airway,
so this is one of the simple solutions for sleep apnea.
This is my youngest boy.
He actually doesn't have sleep apnea, by the way.
As I told you, the CPAP system is one of the best solutions
but you have to wear this fitting mask tightly every night;
it's troublesome,
especially for guys who drink too much, like me.
This may often be the case with Japanese businessmen,
but you may have the experience that after drinking too much,
you go back home,
you cannot do anything,
just dive into bed.
And the next morning you happen to find
you are [still in] bed, [without changing] your clothes,
still wearing a suit, necktie, and the TV on; anything.
This's a very dangerous situation for sleep apnea,
because alcohol may increase symptoms of sleep apnea.
But with our system, you don't have to wear
any sensors or device before you sleep.
It automatically detects your movement and take care of you when you sleep.
Our system also pays attention to users' privacy
in case the user came home with somebody else.
The system always monitors how many people are in front of the system
so the system automatically turns into privacy mode
and just monitors how many people are in front of the camera
but never records anything.
It doesn't matter if she is real or not. (Laughter)
But seriously, about 20% of American adults
are said to have some sleep apnea,
and in Japan, about 25 million people
are said to have sleep apnea.
So our system is relatively cheap and easy to build,
but the benefits from our concept can be tremendous.
And not every single element of our system
was invented by ourselves.
You can access almost all the information from the Internet.
You can download the source code of this software
and the blueprint of the hardware.
Thanks to this new era of industrial revolution,
even though I [don't have] a background [in] computer science, electronic circuits
if you have a passion, you can make it.
So we're thinking about opening this project to anyone,
expecting many Kinect hackers and makers to join this health care program category,
to make our sleep much better and a better world.
Thank you.
(Applause)