Sleep monitors

These earbuds look a bit weird, sure. But they're expressly designed to shepherd you off to sleep, counteracting runaway thoughts and snoring lumps in your bed. And unlike the original Kokoon headphones, they're targeted at side sleepers too.

In order to track how someone's body position changes as they sleep, they typically have to be rigged up with sensors, or filmed by a video camera. MIT's new BodyCompass system, however, offers a third alternative that many people may prefer.

When tracking a sleeping person's eye movements, you typically have to stick hard-wired electrodes onto their face. Soon, however, an unobtrusive flexible mask could do the job – while also measuring their heart rate.

The Kokoon Bluetooth headphones are deeply comfortable and deliver solid sound. However, the "sleep enhancing" bells and whistles are a little inconsistent for headphones priced at the luxury end of the market, so they're not for everyone.

Getting a good night's sleep is not normally listed among the joys of parenting, and anything that could help your baby and yourself catch some extra rest is worth a look. The Cradlewise cradle is designed to do just that.

​People with insomnia sometimes undergo sleep studies, in which they slumber in a clinic while wired to various sensors – perhaps not the best way to replicate their typical sleeping environment. Soon, however, they may simply be able to wear electronic pyjamas, which are currently in development.

​While there are already fitness trackers and smartwatches that are designed to track the wearer's sleep patterns, an international team of scientists believe that with the right software, regular smartwatches are more than up to the job. To that end, they've created an app known as SleepGuard.

Somnox is the latest attempt to address sleep deprivation using technology, this time in the form of a robotic pillow that is claimed to improve sleep by helping regulate breathing and playing sleep-inducing sounds.

The Motiv Ring is exactly what it sounds like, a device to track your sleep, heart rate, steps and activities, all wrapped right around your finger. ​

A new sleep tracker wakes the wearer up three minutes after they fall asleep. Thim is designed to readjust a user’s sleeping cycles to train insomniacs to fall asleep faster, make for better naps and provide more accurate sleep tracking.

One of the latest gadgets to promise better sleep comes from Xuan Yao, a Chinese designer and entrepreneur whose company FitSleep is trying to break into the market with a new device called the FitSleep α1​ that uses alpha waves to beam us into better sleep.

The recent launch of Rythm and the introduction of its Dreem device adds a new approach to combatting poor sleep, by detecting when a sleeper is in a deep sleep state and maintaining that state through the use of sound.​