Sleep is an important part of health and well-being. While sleep quantity is directly measurable, sleep quality has traditionally been assessed with subjective methods such as questionnaires. The study of sleep disorders has for a long time been confined to clinical environments, and patients have had to endure cumbersome procedures involving multiple electrodes placed on the body. Recent developments in sensor technology as well as data analysis methods have enabled continuous, unobtrusive sleep data recording in the home environment. This has opened new possibilities for studying various sleep parameters and their effect on the quality of sleep.
In this talk, I will present an overview of sleep: its purpose (executive summary: nobody knows), its importance (executive summary: pretty important), its structure, various sleep disorders, how sleep can be monitored, and what can be inferred from the sensor data. I will also describe the test setup used to collect sleep data unobtrusively over a period of several months, and take a detailed look at the observations.
Bio:
Olli-Pekka Rinta-Koski has had a keen interest in the quality of sleep since the late 60s, having slept almost every night ever since. He received his M. Sc. degree from the Department of Computer Science at Helsinki University of Technology in 2000 and is sincerely hoping that his tenure as a university student, spanning a quarter of a century, will finally come to an end with the acceptance of his licentiate thesis.
Last updated on 23 Apr 2013 by Antti Ukkonen - Page created on 23 Apr 2013 by Antti Ukkonen