Many adults suffer from insomnia disorder, struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep, or with early morning awakenings. Hyperarousal is an important predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factor to insomnia. Anxiety, depression and ADHD are common comorbid disorders, with shared cognitive, behavioral, genetic, and neurological features. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the gold-standard treatment, more effective and economical than pharmacological treatments, though not suitable or available for everyone. Unfortunately, sleeping pills are still more common than CBT-I, despite known risks. One potential treatment avenue is consumer sleep technology, including interventional sleep robots. 

This thesis aimed to assess the safety, acceptability, effects, and experiences of a commercial sleep robot for insomnia in adults. Overall, the thesis does not strongly support the sleep robot as an effective insomnia treatment. The intervention might not have addressed important precipitating factors of the participants’ insomnia, and the robot’s impact on stress reactivity and other potentially important factors remain uncertain. Until more robust research studies are conducted, the current sleep robot intervention should not be considered an evidence-based treatment for adults with insomnia.

Many adults suffer from insomnia disorder, which entails a difficulty initiating sleep and maintaining sleep, or undesired early morning awakenings coupled with trouble going back to sleep. Hyperarousal is an important causal and maintaining factor in insomnia. Furthermore, comorbid conditions such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD are common. The first line treatment of insomnia is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which has been found to be more effective and economical than pharmaceuticals, albeit not suitable or available for all. Sleeping pills are still the most common treatments of insomnia, which is unfortunate due to established risks. Thus, research on credible treatment options is warranted. One potential type of treatment is consumer sleep technology. The current thesis aimed to assess the safety, acceptability, effects, and experiences of the Somnox sleep robot in adults with insomnia.

Overall, the findings from the studies included in the thesis were not strongly in support of the Somnox sleep robot effectively alleviating symptoms of insomnia in adults. To further improve the understanding of the efficiency of technological devices in reducing arousal, future studies could investigate their impact on stress reactivity levels in participants (as opposed to a generalized hyperarousal), with or without prior stress inducement. There is a lack of empirical evidence on whether relaxation techniques actually improve participants’ sleep. It is also possible that the robot could improve sleep through means other than reducing arousal (e.g., stimulus control). Additionally, without measuring participants’ breathing, it is unclear if potentially reduced arousal is due to more adaptive breathing. Nonetheless, it is important to assess first whether the intervention has any effects at all. Until there is substantial evidence from more studies that demonstrate its efficacy, the Somnox sleep robot should not be considered an evidence-based treatment of insomnia.