Nintendo continues its quest to provide a healthy lifestyle with the introduction of a sensor designed to help people get better sleep.
Satoru Iwata, CEO of the Japanese electronics giant, explained how the sensor works on Thursday at Nintendo's semi-annual corporate management policy briefing, according to CNET. He said the device features technology designed to study how well a person sleeps at night. It provides feedback and suggests different ways for the person to improve his/her lifestyle, such as a change in diet, exercise or habits.
The sensor is placed on your bedside, so there is no need to wear it while you sleep.
"Inside the QOL (Quality of Life) Sensor is a non-contact radio frequency sensor, which measures such things as the movements of your body, breathing and heartbeat, all without physically touching your body," Iwata said. "This automatically gathered data will be transmitted to the QOL cloud servers, which will then analyze the data measured by the sensor and visually represent sleep and fatigue results."
The CEO added that the sensor also focuses on fatigue, which he says researchers have not done enough work on since medical professionals don't consider it to be a disease, GameSpot reported.
Nintendo is working on the project with Dr. Yasuyoshi Watanabe, who is considered to be an expert in fatigue science.
"Accurate and simplified fatigue measurements enabled self-comprehension of the body which is very significant for contemporary humans, and I think it can be used as the benchmark to improve our QOL," Watanabe said. "We will all do our utmost to achieve this world-first product."
U.S.-based company ResMed, which provides medical equipment for treating sleep disorders, is also helping out in developing the technology for the sensors, CNET reported.
Iwata didn't provide a launch-date for the sensor, but he did say that collected information would be shared with the Wii U, 3DS and other "dedicated video game systems," as well as smartphones, tablets, and other "smart devices."
Nintendo announced the development of its QOL Products in January, and the sleep sensor is the first to debut out of this group, Gamespot reported. Iwata said the sensor is also the first step in the company's new venture.
"As I stated in January this year, we have redefined entertainment as something that improves people's QOL in enjoyable ways and aim to broaden our business fields," he said. "As part of this endeavor, we are now going to newly establish this QOL improvement platform."
