At CES 2023, I had the opportunity to interview Paul Lee, Asleep’s Chief Global Business Officer. The company is based in South Korea and is on a mission to improve sleep tracking with its solutions in a much more convenient way than we’re used to.
Mr. Lee elaborated on how his solution differs from competitors’ solutions and why it is important to work with a variety of smart home products. Read a quick synopsis of the interview below, or check it all out in the video above.
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Q: Can you tell us a little more about the company and what you want to achieve?
A: Asleep is a company that wants to improve people’s sleep in a convenient way. A convenient way, in our opinion, is to use only the help of a smartphone. This is very inconvenient.
Also, these days, 80% of people have smartphones, so there is no need to buy other products, which is convenient. It uses sounds picked up by your phone to track your sleep patterns. This allows you to measure sleep apnea, snoring and many other things.
Q: Your solution does not require you to wear a smartwatch or wear anything on your chest or head. So the software is just using the smartphone’s microphone?
Hadley Simmons / Android Authority
A: That’s correct. Just make sure your phone is in your bedroom or near your sleeping person so it can pick up sounds. Our AI model is trained by data collected from National University Hospital, one of Korea’s top hospitals, and we work closely together.
Interestingly, hospital doctors typically attach up to 20 monitors to their patients to track their sleep patterns, but our solution only requires a smartphone nearby. What’s also interesting is that our sleep tracking record beats that of Fitbit, Garmin, and many other big companies in the space.
Q: Your solution also works with various smart home products. Can you tell me more about that?
Ryan Haynes/Android Authority
A: To improve people’s sleep, we need to do two things. The first is using the data our solution collects to change human behavior. The second is to change the environment in which people sleep. This is where connectivity with smart home products comes into play.
Asleep has partnered with LG Electronics.
We have partnered with LG Electronics and our API works with LG Electronics’ smart products to create a better sleeping environment. For example, it can automatically turn off the lights, set the air conditioner to a suitable sleep temperature, or control the air purifier to improve the air quality in your bedroom. All you need to do for this to work is have your smartphone next to your bed.
Q: Do you manufacture hardware or do you focus solely on software?
Caitlin Cimino / Android Authority
A: No, we do not manufacture hardware. We only do software. Our Sleeptrack API collects information so that we can partner with other companies, for example Samsung, to use that data to improve their products, such as air conditioners and air purifiers.
Q: What exactly are you doing at CES? What are you trying to achieve here?
Ryan Haynes/Android Authority
A: Our goal is to partner with various big players in the tech industry such as Google and Amazon. However, we have already partnered with companies in other fields, such as cosmetics.
We are already in talks with 10+ companies from different sectors looking to use our technology, so it’s been a success here at CES. We are also discussing with NASA how to improve the sleep of astronauts in space.
We will definitely be back at CES next year, but we already have plans to expand our booth and introduce people to the entire sleeping environment we envision.
Here’s a quick synopsis of Asleep’s conversation with Paul Lee. For more information, please watch the video on the top page.
