Amazon gets the green light to track your sleep with radar

On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission gave the e-commerce giant permission to create bedside speed cameras meant to track how we turn and turn at night. And while Amazon puts the best possible face on innovation, it’s still about those ad dollars.

Bloomberg was first notice that the agency had discreetly filed a note which authorized the e-commerce giant to develop and deploy an “unlicensed radar device” intended to track any movement nearby. It was in response to a initial request that Amazon filed with the agency nearly three weeks ago, where the company described its vision for “radar sensors.” These devices, Amazon said, would trigger high-frequency radio waves to map the movements of anyone nearby.

And because the FCC is the federal agency responsible for wave police, Amazon was legally obliged to get their green light before starting to market this radar which has not yet obtained a license.

“By capturing movement in three-dimensional space, a radar sensor can capture data in a way that allows control of contactless devices,” Amazon wrote. “As a result, users can interact with a device and control its functionality with simple gestures and movements. “

This type of contactless device control, Amazon explained, could be a boon for disabled or elderly customers who cannot use the bandaged voice assistants because they are unable to speak. And Amazon is absolutely right. Despite the ever-growing list of privacy and security problems packed with Echos and Alexas, we have already seen that these devices can be lifestyle change for people who are blinded or in a wheelchair. from amazon do his best make these devices equally accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, but there is little you can do when these tools are voice-based.

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Thanks to this grant, Amazon has carte blanche to deploy a new version of the Echo that will allow you to set your alarms or turn off your TV with a nod or wave of the hand or perhaps ! let’s hope so ! – sign language. It’s an objectively great idea! The other reason Amazon wanted this grant was less impressive: contactless sleep tracking.

“These devices would allow users to estimate the quality of sleep based on movement patterns,” Amazon wrote in the initial deposit. “The use of radar sensors in sleep tracking could improve sleep hygiene awareness and management, which in turn could produce significant health benefits for many Americans.”

Amazon’s pitch sounds almost identical to that of the innumerable sleepy startups with names like Beddit or SleepScore that traffic in the domain of “relatives. “As you can probably guess from the name, these are the kinds of sleep trackers that sit on your bedside table or pillow while you sleep (instead of on your wrist) and watch your mid-sleep movements to see how ~ restful ~ your rest was. This makes sense in theory, but extrapolating a person’s sleep quality from their general movements is super controversial among the diehards of the sleep research community. Critics will point out that data pulled by nearby speed cameras can be inconsistent-or Totally wrong in some cases, and those who work in the field openly agree that the sleep technology industry needs to standardize its rating systems.

In other words, the “significant health benefits” that Amazon promised the FCC when extracting its sleep-tracking radar technology could have been a bit of a stretch.

Amazon, on the other hand, is reaping very real benefits from this deal. Adding sleep tracking to its technology means Amazon is one step closer to offering the same bells and whistles you’d get from the two undisputed champions of the health monitoring world: Apple and Google. Last summer, Amazon took an even bigger step forward by introduced the Halo group, a wearable bracelet intended to go hand in hand with the Apple Watch, or the Fitbit belonging to Google. (it does not have. At all.)

Amazon’s original FCC documents describing the sleep tracking technology are, as might be expected, fuzzy on the details, and the company has yet to respond to our request for comment. But because the data extracted from these types of devices tends to fall into a strange legally gray area, and because Amazon is … Amazon, it’s worth assuming that your sleep patterns will be transformed into ad targeting fodder rather early.