Autopilot: How our powerful technology drives unmatched sleep improvement

At the core of Eight Sleep lies the belief that technology can help people sleep better. How? We believe that in order to sleep better each individual has to fulfill their own needs. So if your bed can understand what you need and address that, then the score will take care of itself.

The Pod is more than what you can see

When you receive the Pod you unbox a few different components of the product, which you place in your bedroom. This includes the Hub and the Cover. These components are key to your new sleep journey, however, they aren’t sufficient to deliver the full impact on your sleep quality.  Behind the Pod, or better said, powering every key function of the Pod is Autopilot: a set of proprietary algorithms developed by Eight Sleep to create an individual blueprint of each sleeper to create the environment you need for your best sleep.

How Autopilot helps you get a perfect night’s sleep

In a single night, Autopilot takes over 20 actions to help you fall asleep faster, get more deep sleep, and wake up refreshed. Here’s a look into what happens behind the scenes.  Step 1: Over a dozen sensors within the Pod detect as you fall asleep and go through sleep stages The Pod features a unique set of imperceptible sensors that detect biometric, presence, and environmental data across the Cover and Hub. These sensors, mostly located within the Pod’s Cover, are sensitive enough to measure signals without direct contact to the skin and are designed seamlessly to feel invisible to the human touch. In addition to how invisible they are, the Pod’s sensors are unique because they function like a wearable without having to be worn. And, unlike wearables, they can track the two people at the same time. Think of it as a BOGO! You get one product, and receive the value for two people.  Using the high-quality data gathered from the sensors, Autopilot runs a collection of complex algorithms that compute metrics including the following: 

• Time you fell asleep

• Time you woke up

• Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

• Resting Heart Rate

• Respiratory Rate

• Sleep Phases (Deep, REM, Light)

Step 2: Autopilot creates an individual blueprint of your sleep needs and solutions The Autopilot algorithms go beyond metrics tracking, to create a profile – or what we call a blueprint – of each individual as a sleeper. Trained on 1.2 million hours of sleep, these algorithms require complex processing to correlate multiple variables into one dynamic picture of who you are as a sleeper and what you need to get the best rest possible.  What makes your Autopilot blueprint stand out is that it’s ever changing. It is continuously refined to account for the latest findings on what determines and influences a great night of sleep for you. Your Autopilot blueprint understands your needs, by looking at factors including:

• Amount of deep sleep you need tonight based on last night’s sleep

• Amount of REM sleep you need tonight based on last night’s sleep

• Your current sleep stage

• Changes in your environmental temperature

• Your preferred bed temperature at each phase throughout the night

• Your biological sex

• Your age

Step 3: Autopilot makes real-time adjustments to give you deeper, higher-quality sleep Autopilot was designed with the scientific knowledge that temperature is the #1 environmental factor impacting sleep. That’s why Autopilot primarily relies on temperature adjustments to help you get deeper more restful sleep. With your blueprint in hand and thanks to more than dozens training experiments, Autopilot can determine your optimal sleep temperature at every point of the night and makes automatic adjustments to your Pod by cooling or warming each side without any manual effort from you. This lets you spend more time asleep, and less time guessing what temperature to set at night.  This automation and personalization is what ultimately makes the experience of sleeping on a Pod extremely impactful.  Did you know?

• Men and women have different temperature needs due to differences in metabolism and hormones.

• Autopilot tailors your temperature tonight to compensate for the specific sleep stages you were lacking last night.

• Autopilot takes your preferences into account when making adjustments.

The best part: Autopilot automates all its actions to make your life as easy as possible. Autopilot delivers the ultimate sleep experience with minimal effort required from you. Its automatic features make better sleep simple - just let Autopilot take the wheel.  Step 4: Autopilot wakes you up gently and more refreshed Autopilot wakes you up with a gentle vibration and thermal alarm. This wake-up experience is unlike any other, designed to wake you up refreshed without disturbing your partner. Step 5: Autopilot creates a daily report so you can track your sleep progress  In the morning, Autopilot wakes you up gently with vibration or temperature and sends your sleep and health data to the app.  While Autopilot computes metrics in real-time, once your sleep session has ended the final metrics are summarized into a daily report to help you stay on top of your overall health. The report is centered around your Sleep Fitness Score, which is computed based on sleep quality, routine consistency, and time slept. 

Clinically validated algorithms, as accurate as medical-grade devices*

Validated by thousands of nights of data, Autopilot’s HR and HRV algorithms are 99% and 93% accurate* respectively.  *These health-tracking algorithms are constantly being improved and clinically tested by our Research and Development team using gold-standard testing methods like ECGs. Our team has collected over 5,000 nights of data to train, enhance, and test each one of our algorithms and we will continue to refine them as our data set grows over time.  Read our studies

The world’s best sleep will only keep getting better

We’re continuously working to improve Autopilot’s intelligence so that our members can see more sleep improvement. We recently launched Autopilot 3.0, which automatically adjusts based on your last night’s sleep stages to maximize your sleep performance tonight.  Stay on the lookout for more new Autopilot features in the coming months.