Ukraine to present smart pillow at Falling Walls Lab conference of inventions in Berlin

The PI smart pillow beat back stiff competition from an exoskeleton, a virtual Chernobyl tour, an electronic wallet, a magic diet pill and many other inventions to win the right to represent Ukraine at the Falling Walls Lab in Berlin this November.

Some 30 young scientists presented their inventions to the jury at the first Falling Walls Lab qualifying competition in Kyiv on Sept.17. The competition was held at the Institute of Internal Relations of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

According to competition rules, each participant had only three minutes to present their invention to the jury, and it was Oleksandr Shymanko, a student of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, whose smart pillow won the top prize from the judges. Shymanko won a MacBook Air and a ticket to Berlin to present his invention at the completion finals.

“Everybody likes sleeping. And I have an idea for a smart gadget that would be useful for all sorts of people, but especially for those who have health problems. The smart pillow allows you to track your sleep, wake up naturally, and listen to music,” Shymanko said during his presentation.

The PI is a high-tech pillow with special software that connects it to your smart phone. It records your head shape, checks your pulse during sleep, and even will wake you up at the ideal time with music.

“It can play songs to get you off to sleep, and even will choose your favorite music, forming a playlist from the songs in your smart phone. It’s also ideal gadget for kids, because it can tell them a bedtime story,” Shymanko told.

The pillow is charged via a wireless charger. Shymanko said the PI version for kids has its own special design.

The young inventor will present the first prototype of the PI during the Falling Walls Lab in Berlin on Nov. 9 – Ukraine will be taking part in this international conference of inventions for the first time.

The Falling Walls Conference is an annual global gathering of forward thinking individuals from 75 countries organized by the Falling Walls Foundation, which was set up in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Each year, 20 of the world’s leading scientists are invited to Berlin to present breakthrough research. The aim of the conference is to connect science with innovative industry, politics, the media, and the arts, identifying trends, opportunities and solutions connected to global challenges, and making research understandable to a broad audience.