Every new parent has experienced this – waking up in a panic from the practically comatose sleep you fall into from the exhaustion of parenting a newborn; then, in one swift motion, rushing to your baby’s bedside to check their breathing.
I have been through it, with both babies, and wished I had one of those fancy motion-detecting monitors. Now, researchers at the University of Florida have come up with a protype for a baby monitor that uses radar –that’s right, radar – to remotely track the baby’s breathing.
It works wirelessly, as well. A small, book-sized device hooks to the side of the crib and tracks the rising and falling of the baby's chest. If the baby’s breathing falls below a certain threshold or stops entirely, an alarm sounds on the remote unit kept by the parents.
The monitoring unit has a series of lights that indicate the baby’s breathing status, the battery life of the remote unit and the connection to the base unit in the crib.
A future iteration might be able to track the baby’s heartbeat.
