Nobody likes waking up in the morning to the sound of regular alarm clocks or smartphones, but the smell of just baked bread and freshly roasted coffee? Now you’re talking.
The Sensorwake takes a vastly different approach to getting your attention when it’s time to wake up. Instead of using sound to wake you up, the clock uses smell, thanks to the “timed release of an aroma of your choice”.
The invention of 19-year-old Guillaume Rolland, an engineering student from France, the Sensorwake was successfully supported last year to the amount of US$200,000, and Rolland is now taking pre-orders for retail units.
But do smells work as well as a regular audio alarm in terms of waking you up? While we might hate the sound of conventional alarms, they seem to be not effective for most regular sleepers. Rolland claims that the Sensorwake is just as good as audio alarms, with internal testing showing his scent-based alarm wakes 99 percent of people in 2 minutes.
Previous research on the rousing abilities of smells hasn’t been so positive. A 1997 study by fire and rescue workers in Irondale, Alabama was designed to test whether adults woke up in the presence of smoke, water and citrus smells. Of 10 sleeping participants, only two woke up when exposed to the aromas. A subsequent study at Brown University in 2004 also found that scents were not particularly effective at waking sleepers.
The Sensorwake comes with an insurance policy for any sleepers who aren’t awakened by its primary feature. For extra-heavy sleepers who don’t register the smell, there’s a backup audio alarm that’s caused to go off if the aroma hasn’t woken you up within 3 minutes.
We can’t wait to see the reviews when the finished product is released and find out if the Sensorwake smells as good as it sounds.
【小题1】Who invented the Sensorwake last year?| A．A scientist. | B．A student. |
| C．An engineer. | D．A radio operator. |
| A．can replace a regular audio alarm |
| B．is not as good as he had intended |
| C．is very effective in waking up sleepers |
| D．has been well received at home and abroad |
| A．two experiments were carried out before |
| B．previous researches weren’t particularly effective |
| C．where the researches were once experimented |
| D．the researchers have long been carried out |
