Computing giant Intel is known for many things, but sleep tracking is not one of them. The company does, of course, supply processing chips for various wearable devices; however, Intel's brief venture into producing its own wearables ended in 2018, two years after the recall and discontinuation of its first and only smart watch. Since then, Intel has not filed any patents in sleep technology until March of this year.

The latest patent application, which published this week, is a continuation of a sleep management device patent that was first filed in 2016. The device executes a "sleep inducement routine," then uses a microphone to detect the user's sleep state in the morning in order to execute a wake routine at the appropriate time. These routines consist of both visual and audio cues. The device is meant to be worn like a headband, with a microphone capable of capturing the sound of the user's heartbeat. While this technology is far from anything Intel currently has available, the pursuit of a new patent after more than two years of silence indicates that Intel is still invested in the idea and may be looking for different opportunities within sleep monitoring. Other companies using sound-based sleep monitoring include Bose, Philips Electronics, and Withings. You can view these competitors and more on the Magic Number® Consumer Sleep Patent Radian®.