Haptic Pillow Sleeve: Enhancing Sleep Quality by Providing Vital Sound Awareness Through Vibrotactile Feedback

Sleeping environments—such as shared bedrooms, hospitals, or urban settings—often present challenges due to disruptive noises and conflicting alarm schedules. These disturbances can fragment sleep or cause premature awakening. Conventional solutions like earplugs or white noise machines improve sleep quality but compromise awareness of critical sounds (e.g., fire alarms, baby crying), posing safety risks. To address this, we developed an interactive pillow sleeve that delivers vibrotactile feedback for context-based awareness during sleep. Four distinct haptic patterns were designed to represent specific events: fire alarm, smoke alarm, doorbell, and dog barking. A user study (n = 10) evaluated the recognizability of these patterns under conditions eliminating auditory and visual cues. Results indicate that participants could reliably identify associated events, demonstrating the feasibility of haptic-enabled interfaces for enhancing nighttime safety and situational awareness, particularly for shared sleepers and individuals with sensory impairments.