Former NAIT students nominated for award for designing a teddy bear sleep monitor
A group of former NAIT biomedical engineering technology students has been nominated for a major provincial award for their work on a special baby monitoring device.
The group were nominated for the 2023 Capstone Project of the Year Award, a provincial honour given annually by the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET).
For their capstone project, the students took a soft, fuzzy, fluffy teddy bear and made it into a useful tool for parents by adding some useful extras to it. They called it the Night Knight.
These enhancements include movement, temperature and humidity sensors. They will notify the parent's phone via an app if the child moves abnormally, which can be a sign of discomfort, said Denise Alinsasaguin, one of the bear's designers, who was responsible for its hardware.
The monitor records data over an eight-hour period and provides an average reading.
It can also sense an ambient room temperature, and if it drops below 19 C or exceeds 24 C, the bear's sensor will send a signal to the parent's phone.
Having their project in the running for the capstone award is significant for the team, Alinsasaguin said.
"We were actually solely focused on completing our capstone project. So, being a finalist was not on our minds."
Barry Cavanaugh, the CEO of ASET, was impressed with the project because it's innovative and useful for the public, he said.
"You see ingenuity combined with the need to do something meaningful for people, to do something worthwhile for society. That's a feature that I see in almost every one of our capstone projects," he said.
Being a part of the award-nominated project looks very good on the participant's resume, Cavanugh said.
A teddy bear that contains movement, temperature and humidity sensors, called the Night Knight. (Submitted by ASET)
Alinsasaguin said the project has potential for future development and commercialization. With some refinements to the design, she said, it could become a practical device that could be put into production.
The team is not currently working on commercializing the bear, she said, but they're open to returning to Night Knight if investors express interest in it.
Cavanaugh said he wouldn't be surprised if the project reaches production.
"I think there's a market," he said, such as young people who want to keep an eye on their children at all times to make sure they're not in any peril.
