Sleep Robot: Lullabies, Smart Beds and ABB Robots

People have always tried to make sleep come faster, with songs, rocking and steady background sound. A sleep robot is the latest attempt: a soft machine you hold that breathes slowly, a pillow that moves your head when you snore, or a bed cover that changes temperature through the night. This post follows that line from lullabies and rocking chairs to the white noise machine, then looks at the sleep robots and smart beds for adults on sale in 2026. It ends with where industrial robots such as ABB's fit in, and for now that is the factories that build these products.

A volunteer wired up for a sleep study, the sensors that smart beds try to replace. Photo: Clinique Somnomed / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How lullabies, rocking chairs and fans put people to sleep

The oldest sleep aids needed no machine at all. Lullabies exist in many cultures and go back to ancient times, and the English word was first recorded around 1560, from the Middle English lullen, to lull. Their tunes are simple and repetitive on purpose. Rocking is just as old. Rocking cradles long predate rocking chairs, and one example from antiquity was found in the ruins of Herculaneum. A steady rhythm and a gentle motion turn up again in most of the sleep gadgets that came later, robots included.

A mother in northern Laos rocks two babies to sleep in hammocks, 2005. Photo: Everhard van Eimeren / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The rocking chair arrived much later. Early rocking chairs appeared in England around 1725, and the first known use of the term dates from 1766. They are linked with parents rocking babies to sleep, but many adults use them for the same reason, and studies have found that a gentle rocking motion helps people fall asleep faster than lying still. A bed or pillow that moves slowly is, in effect, copying what a parent's arm or a porch rocker did by hand.

Empty rocking chairs on an old farmhouse porch, 1973. Photo: Anne LaBastille / US National Archives via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Sound was the next thing to be mechanised. Marpac dates its Sleep-Mate to 1962. Jim Buckwalter built the prototype in his garage after noticing that the steady hum of an air conditioner helped his wife sleep. It was little more than a small motor and fan blade inside a housing, making the sound of moving air with no draft. A patent followed in 1963, the same year the machine appeared in a Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. Renamed the Dohm in 2010, it is still sold, and digital sound machines now play rain, waves and pink noise at the press of a button.

A LectroFan white noise machine, a descendant of the 1962 Sleep-Mate. Photo: Morn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Breathing robots and smart beds in 2026

The product its makers call the world's first sleep robot came out of the Netherlands. Somnox began as a soft robotics student project at Delft University of Technology, led by Julian Jagtenberg, who wanted to help a family member with insomnia. The result is a bean shaped pillow you hug while it breathes slowly, and users tend to match its rhythm without thinking about it. Its Kickstarter campaign started on 14 November 2017 and raised €200,274 from 509 backers in a month. The company, now based in Rotterdam, reported a positive EBITDA for 2024.

A digital sound machine with white, pink and brown noise and nature sounds. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Other makers took the same idea in different directions. Fufuly, a breathing cushion from Hakuhodo, Japan Tobacco and Yukai Engineering, swells and shrinks against the belly to slow the user's breathing, and was a CES 2023 Innovation Awards honoree. The Korean firm 10minds sells the Motion Pillow, which learns the sound of its owner's snoring and inflates airbags inside the pillow to turn the head. Beds got motors and sensors too. Sleep Number grew out of the air bed maker Select Comfort, founded in 1987, and its beds adjust the firmness of air chambers on each side.

A Sleep Number store in Minnesota, 2019, selling adjustable air beds. Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The latest news is about cooling. In late September 2026 Eight Sleep launched the Pod 6, a smart mattress cover with nine biometric sensors on each side, a hub half the size of the old one and prices starting at $1,999. On 9 October 2026 Furniture Today reported that the Chinese bed maker DeRucci was entering the US market with five AI smart beds. ABB does not make any of these products, and we found no ABB project with these companies. Where ABB robots could fit is in the factories that build them, the subject of our post on mattress manufacturing.

ABB YuMi assembling small parts beside a lab worker. Photo: ABB

Where sleep robots and their factories go next

At home, the next step is probably a bed that combines the separate gadgets: sensors that read breathing and heart rate, a cover that heats or cools each side, an inflatable pillow for snoring and a soft breathing companion for people who cannot switch off. The hard part is proving that it works. Sleep labs still measure sleep with electrodes on the head and chest, and a consumer product that claims to treat snoring or insomnia moves close to medical device rules. Parents looking for help with babies face a separate set of safety questions, covered in our post on the robotic bassinet.

Sleep study electrodes on a sleeper's face and head. Photo: Clinique Somnomed / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In factories, these products are a mix of electronics, textiles, foam and pumps, which is familiar ground for industrial robots. A YuMi IRB 14000 was designed to assemble small parts, such as the circuit boards and sensor strips inside a smart cover or a breathing pillow. An IRB 360 FlexPicker could pack small accessories, and an IRB 660 or IRB 460 could palletize boxed beds and pillows at the end of the line. These are possibilities, since none of the sleep tech makers has said it uses ABB robots. Cells like these are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer, the kind of robot that stacks boxed goods at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Buyers and makers both have problems to solve. For buyers, cost comes first, with the cheapest Pod 6 at $1,999 and soft robots costing far more than a good pillow. Privacy is another, because these devices record breathing, heart rate and sound all night. For makers, volumes are still small and models change every year or two, so flexible cobots such as GoFa CRB 15000, which can be moved and retaught quickly, may suit them better than fixed lines. Skills matter too: the people who design sleep products rarely program robots, so simple tools like Wizard easy programming help.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

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