Yves Behar, a popular Swiss industrial designer and entrepreneur, has created a highly advanced baby crib, complete with Wi-Fi capabilities.
The crib, called the Snoo, is described by its manufacturers as the world’s first smart sleeper. It’s a robotic crib fitted with microphones, sensors and speakers that run the full gamut in electronic care and monitoring.
Made in an oval shape with no sharp edges to keep babies safe, and high enough so that parents can see the baby from a bed, the Snoo comes packed with features. These include electronically rocking a baby to sleep, a built-in swaddling blanket that ensures the baby safely stays put, and mesh sides to allow for free airflow, TechCrunch reports.
The Snoo monitors a baby’s movements and sounds closely, and can calm an infant with rocking “womb-like motions” so that parents don’t have to get up in the middle of the night. Behar says,
Snoo is often able to calm even the worst crying jags and help babies fall asleep.
The California-based Behar is an advocate of sustainability, and has designed many internet-connected products from thermostats to robotic furniture. He says his own experiences as a sleepless parent formed the foundation for the Snoo’s idea and design.
Sleep patterns are sent to a companion app via Wi-Fi, and parents can see how their baby is doing in a glance. There’s also a little shield inside the crib to prevent any radiation exposure, and it can be manually turned off.
The robotic crib took five years to conceptualize and complete, in a partnership between Behar’s Fuseproject studio and Harvey Karp, author of The Happiest Baby on the Block. Behar says the plan was to come up with a crib that looked like an actual piece of furniture, rather than something so robotic-looking that it would deter parents from buying it.
Available from Happiest Baby, this new piece of modern baby equipment retails at $1,160.
