iOBED International has become one of the first companies in the mattress industry to win a gold medal in the consumer goods category at the Edison Awards.
The 2021 Edison Awards was celebrated this year in Ft. Myers, Florida, and each year the prize recognizes and honors the most innovative new products, services, and business leaders in the world. This year, iOBED’s body sensing technology was a highlight of the show.
The technology consists of 40 individual smart cells on each side of the company’s beds that are made from thermoplastic urethane (TPU), which is known for being safe, strong, and recyclable post-use. And in each cell, there are four zones targeting a person’s shoulders, torso, hips, and legs.
Originally used in the medical field for burn patients to prevent bedsores, iOBED has commercialized the product for the consumer market.
“Within 15 seconds of lying down on the bed, the bed knows you versus the person sleeping next to you,” Scott Smalling, EVP of global sales and marketing for iOBED. “People will see those four zones at retail and realize how much support they are getting. And it adjusts to you based on our algorithm. You will see that the bed knows you.”
The control unit is built into the bed, and there is a single unit on each side that operates independently. Each control unit has the ability to make the mattress firmer or softer, but even when you change those settings, the feel holds true to iOBED’s algorithm setting—which is based on weight and body type.
As a person moves at night, the air can move within each zone, meaning there’s no need for the control unit to turn on to change the pressure. If it’s small nuances, it will just share and redistribute air within that zone.
“Everything is controlled by a smartphone app that collects sleep data—which mainly comes from how much you’re moving, because when you move you’re not in as deep a sleep as when you’re not moving” Smalling explains. “Then users can access that information the next day and figure out how they can change their sleeping habits
As for the award, Smalling says it’s not about what happened at the event, but rather, what will happen now that the award has been won.
“Due to our win and the news about it, we’ve already been receiving a lot of calls from different countries that are interested in this tech,” Smalling says. “With anything, it’s not what happens at the event, it’s what information I take from it and use for the next two years. That Edison award logo is going to be on everything we use from now on.”
