Eight Sleep: The tech unlocking a better night’s sleep

“If people could do more with their lives because they’re getting better sleep, that's hugely impactful.”

Eight Sleep is at the forefront of transforming the way we rest - come on a journey with us as we delve into this new sleep technology with their latest innovation, the Pod 4 Ultra. The new AI generated mattress can regulate your temperature, detect and prevent snoring and, reminiscent of a reclining chair, it can adjust to alter your body position. 

In this episode, we’re taken on a tour of the Eight Sleep workshop space by technical program manager, Harry Xiao, who provides us with an insider's look into the innovative features of the Pod 4 Ultra. He guides us through the functionality of autopilot technology, explaining how it ensures a dreamy sleep environment tailored to individual preferences. We also learn about how important rest is in our day to day lives.

Find out more about Eight Sleep here.

Find out more about Arena here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena and Clarissa Maycock. Location recording by Bria Suggs. And music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, diving headfirst into the future of sleep tech.

I'm Paul Hames from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology.

Sleep issues affect many of us, and we're more aware than ever of the serious impacts on our health that lack of sleep can have. It's no wonder we've turned to technology to track and analyze our sleep patterns. But San Francisco based EightSleep is taking sleep optimization to the next level. They're on a mission to improve the way we rest.

Their newest product, Pod4, incorporates autopilot technology. Adjusting temperatures independently on each side of the bed to cater for individual comfort. It also submits detailed sleep reports every morning and the really clever part is it can gently wake you up at the optimal time. We sent our producer, Bria Suggs, to meet Eight Sleep's technical program manager, Harry Xiao, and of course, experience a demo of the Pod4 in action

 Hi, my name is Harry. I'm a technical program manager, uh, here at EightSleep. I look after product development of the EightSleep products, including the, the Pod and many exciting future products as well. We're at the San Francisco office right now. Um, currently at EightSleep, we have main offices in New York and, and San Francisco.

And this is where most of the engineering work happens. This space here is where we tinker and work. Build the latest technologies that will then ultimately make its way into future Eight Sleep products. Eight Sleep started, um, I think it was back in 2016 with our co founders, Mateo, AZ, and Max. Um, so Mateo is our CEO.

He grew up in a highly competitive environment through sports. He actually struggled with sleep. And so his idea was, can technology help you with sleep? And this is where, um, Max had come on. So Max is our chief technical officer and he really started to play around with the technologies. Where this ultimately came together, I think was back in around 2019 when the pod one was launched and the pod one was, uh, Eight Sleep's first product that started to heat and cool the bed to provide that thermal regulation. So throughout the years, pod one became pod two, became pod three and now pod four. So every generation the product is in my opinion, just a lot more refined and a lot more capable in providing that better sleep experience

What I have set up here is actually our newest product It's called the Pod4 you are actually going to be one of the first people in the world to experience it. Um, so hopefully you get to uh, check it out. So what I have here is basically a very simple bed demo and I've kind of set it up as if you know, someone was going to go to bed, so I think it'll be a great idea for you to just try it the thermo regulation piece and just to see like kind of experience it in terms of how it feels. I've actually got one side set to cooling and one side set to heating, and It'll probably be uncomfortable because I've got it set to the maximum coldness and I've got it set to maximum heat, so it's kind of a bit like a Goldilocks experiment here. If you find one side too cold and one side too hot, then probably somewhere in between you're going to find that really optimum perfect temperature to help you get to sleep. So I guess right now are you feeling a little bit warm or a little bit cold? 

Yeah, let's do the cold side. 

Okay, let's do the cold side- yeah, there's not many, a lot of people have heated blankets and everything to warm up the bed, but the cooling bit is really difficult, but it's pretty cool. 

Yeah. I feel like as a sleeper, I get pretty warm in the middle of the night and I wake up and I kick covers off.

This should be the coolest side. 

Oh my goodness. Oh wow. It's actually way cooler than I thought. That's so cool. How does this work? Are there like coils in the bed? 

That's right. So, um, what you find here is something called the Pod Hub. And... And then something called the pod cover is is what goes over the bed Uh connected to that is we have a little uh cord here and traveling through the cord is water and that's what actually provides the the temperature differentials.

So if you're cold, um, this can help create warm water and it'll pass the warm water across. And if you're really warm, then this can actually chill the water and it'll pass, um, the water through the cover. 

Is there any chance of like the water coming through this cover? 

So leaks can be a problem. Sometimes when you have pets with sharp claws, they could puncture the water tubes.

Yeah. So we always try to make our system as resilient as, as possible. And even going from Pod3 to Pod4 one of our big aims is to improve the resiliency of the water carrying tubes.

So yeah, um, why don't you hop in and kind of experience both sides. 

It's definitely toasty. It's very soothing. I feel like I could definitely fall asleep with the heat. I don't know if I could stay asleep. I'd probably wake up hungry, so I'd probably have to switch. Okay, let's try the cool side. This is so nice.

I've never I didn't even know that beds could do this. 

Yeah. We're one of the few companies in the world that can actually offer this. This is much cheaper than air conditioning, so if you have air conditioning that you know has to cool down the entire house and the rooms that you're not using, this uses way less power and then it just cools down the environment that really matters when you sleep is around the bed. I guess one thing I'm not sure if you kind of noticed this.

Yeah, one side's really cool, one side's really warm. And this is actually a really important feature for us is to have completely independent temperature control because often you- you sleep with a partner. And then you're always fighting on, you know, someone wants it really warm and it's too hot for the other person or someone wants it really cool and it's too cold for the other person.

So having two independent zones for temperature has been a really big hit for us. The other thing that, uh, we've been working really hard on is to. get it to be as comfortable as possible because, you know, there are water carrying tubes underneath the bed. And that's what kind of does the temperature control.

And, you know, since previous generations, we made it a lot thinner and it's a lot more comfortable. Like we want it to be something that can match the mattress that, that you have today. And we call that invisible comfort. So I think With Pod4 we've really made strong strides in that area.

So we have something new called the Pod4 Ultra, and it's actually a base that helps you move the mattress. Quite similar to an adjustable base where you can see here, it's lifting up your torso as well as lifting up your legs. So this is what we call the relax state. Hopefully you feel quite relaxed. 

I do. I like that my legs come up and it's not just that I'm sitting up 

We are adding this feature of this adjustability just to help situations before sleep where you could be I might just move it again into something called reading mode It lifts your torso up and it just... Rather than stacking the pillows behind your neck you're able to kind of just use the bed to sit up and during all this time the thermal regulation works as well, so it can kind of warm you up or cool you down through the regular pod.

Since we have a lot of sensing capabilities built into the cover, we're able to now detect snoring. And something that is really neat is that not only can you detect something, but you can also mitigate it. So during the middle of night, it was just silently raised and as it detects that snoring has stopped, it'll gently lower as well.

I'm texting my dad after this. Because he needs that. He likes to pretend that he doesn't snore. We all know that he snores. It's bad. 

Absolutely. Um, and the other cool thing is this is our pod right now going at full blast. It's trying to get something as cold as possible and something as warm as possible.

Noise is obviously in a bedroom is really important, but we've made it a lot quieter. 

So where we're heading towards is basically, this is our main workshop space. And right now, there's... We basically have multiple projects, um, looking at developing different areas of the, the current products and, and future products. And, you know, what you see is just a bunch of surfaces and a bunch of floor space.

And the idea is that, yeah, we get to, um. We get to play around with things, we get to develop, and we get to really, you know, hone in on the cool new technologies and features. So this is the inside of the hub. We pulled all the panels out and you can basically see the guts, uh, inside. So ultimately, this thing here, the goal of the hub is to thermal regulate the water that goes inside the cover.

And the way it does that is through a heat exchanger. As water travels through this system, it travels through these plates that can either heat or cool the water down. And then that water is then pumped all around the bed and it basically gets the bed to the temperature that you want. And as the human body is producing heat, it's also able to carry that heat away and basically give you that comfortable sleeping temperature.

The bed would recycle the same water. So once it fills it up and it's able to expel all the air, then it seals itself off. And then basically it becomes a sealed system. So over time, yeah, you just, it's almost a set and forget. Once you fill it up, um, it will just run.

I have to think back to when I was a kid, growing up in Australia, and we didn't have air conditioning, you know, you had hot Sydney nights, and the best we could do was just open the window and hope that there is a breeze, eventually that would come through, you know, have the just.. Have the bedsheets and often, you know, you do that in the beginning of the night and then that breeze finally comes in, it cools everything down and you wake up in the middle of the night cause you're freezing and then you got to find that blanket.

I think that's has always been the status quo that I've been used to. Uh, since then, I think air conditioning has been something that's been very beneficial and some areas in the world absolutely need it. Um, but it can become quite inefficient. Air conditioners use a lot of power and especially if you're cooling rooms that you don't need to, that then becomes extra inefficient as well.

Often there are a lot of passive cooling technologies where... You could lie on something and you can get that instantaneous cold sensation. But the challenge there is it gives you that initial cold sensation, but it warms up pretty quickly because it can't carry that heat away. Um, what makes Eight Sleep a lot more unique is that it's the active, it has an active cooling ability. And that means because it has the water traveling through, not only can it cool down the bed, it can actually carry that heat away. So it can maintain that cool temperature throughout the night.

So I have a background in developing a lot of technologies that sense the human bodies through wearables and other senses. And what I've come to experience is that these wearables, they're very good at getting a whole bunch of data and helping to present that data to you. Whether it's health of your heart or your overall fitness and activity. Uh, on one hand. That's really, really beneficial to, to help coach and guide. But on the other hand, it's really difficult to interpret what that means. And at the end of the day, you know, what does 10, 000 steps versus 12,000 steps actually mean? And what does like a 55 heart rate versus a 60 heart rate mean?

Um, what we do at Eight Sleep is that there is this really key sensing technology, but on the other hand, we can do something about it through an actuation mechanism. And that way we can collect the data and then use our technologies to then change something, which is the temperature in which you sleep. And ultimately that feedback loop means the outcome is no longer just a piece of data from a sensor, but it's the feeling that you feel so much more refreshed or it's like "hey, I feel great because I've had good sleep" or "hey, I feel so much better about my day because I have good sleep".

And to me, that outcome is just so much more impactful and so much more meaningful than just a bunch of numbers on a page.

One of the really exciting things about being an engineer is the impact you can have on not just one person at a time, but a whole, you know, a whole group or a whole population of people. If we can get that product right, then more and more people can use it and it helps more and more people. You could sleep for eight hours and still feel pretty groggy in the morning. And that's really to do with the type of sleep that you get. And ultimately it's the REM and the deep sleep that we think are the most impactful. So sleep is not just qualified on the duration, but it's also going to be qualified by the quality of sleep. So in terms of what we're trying to do at Eight Sleep, you know, if thermal regulation allows you to get more REM sleep and deep sleep, that just means you should be feeling a lot more refreshed, um, and a lot more energised in the mornings.

And if we can do that in less time, then we've made sleep more efficient. There are a lot of people in the world that really struggle with sleep, and it affects their... Their well being, it, it, it really impacts their daytime. When you go from saying, "Oh, I just, I really hate sleeping" or "I hate going to sleep" or "I hate how I feel after I sleep" to, you know, "I feel so much more refreshed. I'm ready for today". Like that's the results where we're looking for. You know, even trivial things like stopping arguments in bed, stopping fights over, you know, who, who gets the bigger blanket or what temperature to set the room has is, is also like a, an interesting piece of feedback that we've gotten, but for me, by far the most impactful one, if, if people can do better and do more with their lives, because they're getting better sleep for me, that's hugely impactful.

That was Harry Xiao from EightSleep, with some fascinating insights into just how important and beneficial sleep is to our daily lives. Now it's time to meet our expert, John Hirschtick, EVP at PTC. John, we've heard how EightSleep offer an intelligent cooling and heating technology for any bed. As the company grew, they adopted ARENA, PTC's cloud native PLM solution in early 2023.

What benefits can ARENA provide to companies such as EightSleep? 

Well, ARENA provides a lot of benefits to companies like Eight Sleep. First, Eight Sleep was growing and they had more complex products, with each product having Over a hundred parts. They needed a more capable system to manage the whole product life cycle.

Since ARENA is cloud native, they were able to start up and learn quickly the plug and play element of ARENA. It was a huge win for them. Competing in this global economy is very challenging. You need to share the latest product and quality information with your internal teams and with supply chain partners.

So that you can deliver innovative products to customers fast. The ARENA PLM solution, it makes it easy for product teams to collaborate anytime and anywhere. And with EightSleep, they're already seeing that. For instance, they have a lot of contract manufacturers in China, and the fact that ARENA works across borders and has a Chinese interface was a huge benefit.

ARENA has already become Eight Sleep's primary communication tool to keep track of everything. The whole team can now collaborate on one system, allows the information to transfer very quickly. Another factor, SKU complexity. Different products for different regions of the world. The bed sizes differ from US to Europe. Content manuals are different. Power plugs are different. ARENA enabled EightSleep to get to market faster by making it more efficient. No digging through files. Everything is in version control and has a history. So you just look it up and it's there and quick to access.

Thanks to Harry for shedding light on the future of sleep tech and giving us a sneak peek into EightSleep's workshop space. Please rate, review and subscribe to our bi weekly Third Angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow PTC on LinkedIn and X for future episodes.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jackie Cook, sound design and editing by Rema McKenna, location recording by Bria Suggs and music by Rowan Bishop.