Mysterious Amazon radar to track users in their sleep!

Tracking fitness and health has become common over the years, from wearable fitness trackers (including those from Fitbit) to devices that can track your sleep independently like Google’s Nest Hub. Now e-commerce giant Amazon is all set to enter the fray with its own non-wearable sleep tracker, according to a new report which states that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted the company a waiver to use the 60GHz band for sleep tracking.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the company asked the US FCC on June 22 to gain permission for a device that could use radar sensors to detect motion and make use of “contactless” sleep tracking, which was granted on Friday. The sensors are reportedly able to detect and identify movement in three dimensions, which means that they should be able to register user movements. In addition to accurately tracking sleep, the device could also help persons with “mobility, speech, or tactile impairments”, according to the report.

Also read: Looking for a smartphone? Check Mobile Finder here.

However, if you are looking for an alternative to Google’s second generation Nest Hub sleep tracking device, there’s no word on when Amazon could actually bring such a device to the market. According to the report, instead of a wearable device, it looks like the company could integrate the technology into its Echo devices that could monitor users from their nightstands.

This isn’t the first time that we have seen this sort of technology being used. The report states that the FCC noted that it has previously granted Google permission to use similar technology to power gestures its Pixel smartphone. Readers might remember that the Pixel 4 smartphone introduced by Google allowed users to control their smartphones using touch-less gestures by waving their hands. Amazon had also previously launched a Fire smartphone in 2014, with multiple camera sensors that were supposed to let users control their device with their hands.