What's the news?
You're tired, you've had a long, hard day at work, the commute home has been awful but at least your car has lane-keeping assist to help you home... and then you've got to share your bed with a middle-lane hog, who keeps rolling onto your side of the mattress and snoring loudly in your ear.
A nightmare scenario, eh? And one which can, according to studies, lead to sleep loss that increases the risk of personal injury and maybe even accidents at home, work and on the road. Indeed, one in four of us in relationships apparently sleeps better on their own, but if you don't want to go through a 'sleep divorce' and end up in a separate bed to your beloved, Ford has the answer.
It has come up with a 'Lane-Keeping Bed', which makes sure that even the most invasive of bed partners stays on their side of the road. Sorry, we mean, their side of the bed. And it uses the aforementioned lane-keeping technology to 'nudge' the errant sleeper back to their side of the bed, by using pressure sensors to determine when someone has strayed across the central divide and using an integrated conveyor belt to gently move them back across.
"When sleeping together, many couples each have less space than a small child has in a single bed," said Dr Neil Stanley, an independent sleep expert and author of How To Sleep Well. "Humans are most vulnerable when sleeping, so we're programmed to wake when something or someone touches us unexpectedly. If someone moves onto your side of the bed this defence mechanism will kick in and you'll have a broken night, often while they continue to sleep soundly. I've seen it ruin relationships."
The Lane-Keeping Bed is one in a series of 'Ford Interventions', in which the company applies its automotive expertise to tackle everyday problems. At the moment, this is just a prototype, so don't go expecting to order one down your local branch of DFS.
Anthony Ireson, director for marketing communications for Ford of Europe, said: "Lane-keeping assist in our cars can make driving easier and more comfortable. We thought that showing how similar thinking could be applied to a bed, would be a great way to highlight to drivers a technology that they might not previously have been aware of."
Anything else?
You can watch a video of the Lane-Keeping Bed in action, right here.
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