The joy a baby brings is unparalleled, but the arrival of a family member causes a significant upheaval in the lives of new parents. A seemingly mundane activity like sleep quickly becomes a luxury after becoming a parent. A new survey has revealed that parents of a newborn don’t sleep for more than 5-6 hours a night. It’s especially hard on first-time parents as babies tend not to sleep for long stretches and it takes a good couple of years for them to sleep through the night. This can cause drastic levels of exhaustion in parents.

The travails of modern life includes new parents unable to avail extended periods of maternal or paternal leave. Several young parents are full-time professionals and have to juggle multiple commitments, including the most important of them all – caring for a newborn. Long working hours, varied parenting and family structures, inflexible maternity & paternity leave policies at the workplace can quickly cascade for new parents as an overwhelming life event.

Radhika and Bharath Patil experienced these whirlwind of emotions when they had their first child. Their firstborn faced significant challenges developing a regular sleep pattern. The duo, who met while pursuing higher studies in Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, decided to put their engineering skills to use and develop a solution to what they only imagined every other new parent faced.

Thus began the journey of the startup Cradlewise, with the development of an AI-powered smart crib, replete with a bassinet and rocker. This innovative product has been named in TIME List of 100 Best Inventions Of 2020. Previously incubated in NASSCOM’s Center of Excellence IoT & AI in Bangalore, Cradlewise won a spot with the prestigious HAX Accelerator and has now shifted operations to San Francisco.

Smart sensors in the cradle are designed to detect even the slightest movements of a baby and instinctively rock the child back to sleep. A combination of hardware, software and deep tech makes the Smart Cradle an all-in-one device that can provide responsive soothing to a baby, detect loud sounds outside the cradle, constantly monitor the sleeping child and send updates to the parents through an app.

Some of the features include Responsive soothing, where smart sensors look for early wake-up signals in the baby, following which the cradle automatically rocks the baby back to sleep along with soothing music. Moreover, AI decodes and understands the baby’s sleep patterns and creates personalized sleep recipes for the child. External loud sound detection sensors allow for effortless detection of sudden, loud external sounds that could disturb a child, and the cradle begins to rock the child immediately. New parents often worry if their newborn is sleeping right – specifically to ensure if their baby is breathing properly while sleeping or if there is any kind of physical discomfort in a crib or cradle. Cradlewise also provides a Contactless Baby Monitor, which detects unsafe sleep postures, and obstruction to breathing among others. Cradlewise uses a patented technology to ensure the swinging of the cradle is noiseless. Moreover, the rocking mechanism is rather gentle and also doesn’t use much power. Keeping in line with the tech-savvy generation of parents, Cradlewise has an app that provides constant updates on the baby to the parents. Currently, the app is designed for Android devices.

While the technology used on the product is cutting-edge and is intended to make life easy for the parents, there are other features that make it an equally amenable option for babies too. The smart crib's design keeps the baby snug, distributes the weight of the child evenly (avoiding any pressure on the head). The crib is made of coconut husk, cotton and latex – breathable and light materials for the welfare of the baby. 

Growing children and of course, adults, are accustomed to silent environments to sleep better but its this very silence that’s highly unnerving for babies. While in the womb, babies are accustomed to “whooshing” sounds that are rhythmic and soothing. It takes some months for a newborn to grow out of these sounds. Cradlewise mimics these womb sounds, also called White Noise, allowing a baby to sleep well. Additionally, the app comes with some generic soothing musical options to facilitate better sleep.