With this new “dynamically uncomfortable” mattress technology, you’ll WANT to get out of bed in the morning! Become more productive and never have trouble waking up on time!

The issue:

Sometimes, it’s hard to get out of a comfy bed and face the cruel and merciless world.

Proposal:

We can solve this problem by making a bed that becomes progressively less comfortable as the desired wakeup time arrives.

Certain mattresses already have the ability to dynamically adjust their firmness (for example, the “Sleep Number” brand of air mattresses).

For this “progressively less comfortable mattress” system, we’ll need to go beyond just air mattresses: the bed will need an adjustable interior frame that can become jagged and angular (Figure 1), thus encouraging the bed’s occupant to get up.

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Fig. 1: Left: the mattress in its default “comfortable” state, where the springs all behave identically. Right: the mattress in “uncomfortable” mode, where a hydraulic mechanism stretches out some springs (shown in blue) and compresses others (shown in red) to make the mattress surface extremely lumpy and uncomfortable. As a result, it will be a relief to get out this horrendously uncomfortable bed even in the coldest and darkest of winter mornings.

The bed would also need an “alarm clock” function in order to cause the comfort level to be set by the time of day.

One could imagine also integrating other “smart health” functions and perhaps controlling the mattress settings via smartphone app (which will inevitably be discontinued within 2 years, leaving the whole system completely useless).

Conclusion:

This technology could also be implemented for futons, sofas, and other similar furniture.

So much effort has been expended on making sofas and beds more comfortable: perhaps it is time for more research to go into making them less comfortable. Really makes you think.

PROS: Increases productivity and makes it easier to be a “morning person.”

CONS: Might potentially stretch out the sheets in a weird fashion, causing them to fray more quickly.