News - 2016042805 - This "smart mattress" lets people keep tabs on their spouses
Finally, a gift for the insecure tech fan who has it all but hates confrontation: Smarttress, a Spanish-born infidelity trap and, according to the company, “the very first mattress that makes your body relax by night and your mind by day, when you’re not at home.”
Dreamed up to help combat an epidemic of infidelity that’s supposedly plaguing Spanish culture (and even ones closer to home), Smarttress is $1000 or so’s worth of sleeping surface with a subtle layer of technology inside that even a pea-obsessed princess might not notice, though it’d certainly notice her. According to the company, the mattress’ 24 embedded ultrasound sensors pick up on movement and vibration happening up top, while the connected bed’s accompanying app lets owners know if and exactly how their bed sees any surprising “bounce action” while that owner is away–reporting details right down to the “intensity” and “impacts per minute” of an incident.
Understandably, the new product has faced a somewhat skeptical reception, perhaps because of the many fathomable situations that could result in a potentially conflict-causing ‘false positive.’ Kids, dogs, monkeys, or even bunnies having an innocent jump on the bed could potentially trigger a chilling notification, for example, not to mention solo pelvic lift exercises or stability experiments. Another reason that some might suspect Smarttress is merely a promotional gag, perhaps, is the fact that many smaller, cheaper, better established, and more accurate methods of surveillance are already available to persons who’re determined to spy on their spouses–and, for cheating consumers themselves, any number of unaffiliated beds. Critics may further take issue, one imagines, with the product’s rather narrow, “impact”-centric definition of sexual activity.
Nevertheless, spokesperson Antonio Muiño confirmed to re/code that the company has in fact been producing “sleep-related items” since 2012, the site notes, and currently puts out something like 70 mattresses each day; according to Muiño, the company is ”still in the manufacturing process” for Smarttress but has already received interest in the mattress from would-be owners.