Google’s future baby monitor could spy on your kid to alert you before they cry

By Hillary K. Grigonis September 6, 2019

Future video monitors could warn parents before the baby starts crying — a recently published patent details Google’s plans for an artificial intelligence system that tracks an infant’s eyes and movements as well as sounds to alert parents to unusual behavior. The patent, published on September 5 but filed last year, could create a smarter baby monitor that alerts parents when the baby is starting to stir or the toddler is attempting to scale the crib railing — if parents are willing to let Google spy on their child.

The patent details a system that mixes a video monitor with A.I.-based software. By monitoring the baby’s eyes and movement, the camera could look for signs of discomfort that a traditional audio monitor wouldn’t detect. A baby that’s moving more than usual, the patent suggests, may be too hot or too cold.

The eye-monitoring A.I. could track if the baby is awake or sleeping by determining if the eyes are open or closed. The software could also detect the baby’s position — letting parents know if their toddler is sleeping or trying to climb out of the crib instead. All those features could tie in with an app that sends parents notifications on a smartphone or tablet.

The patent — if it ever comes to fruition — would likely be an expansion of the Google Nest security camera. The baby-monitoring A.I. isn’t the only baby tracking tech coming from Alphabet — Verily, a healthcare research division of the company, is working with Pampers on a diaper sensor that tracks diapers and sleep and sends the data to an app. The Lumi smart diaper is also designed to work with a Logitech camera system with audio as well as tracking the temperature of the room.

While adding nursery-friendly features to Google Nest isn’t far fetched, some parents may be wary of the technology. Wi-Fi enabled video monitors are known for being hacked, and the privacy-conscious may not like the idea of putting A.I. — and Google — in the nursery.

By monitoring more than sound, however, the technology could alert parents when the baby is starting to stir instead of at the first scream — which may give sleep-deprived parents a warning if they only have a few minutes to finish their coffee.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Hillary K. Grigonis

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…

Computing

This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio

acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.