Ford built a baby cot that mimics a night drive
It sure beats actually driving around until your little one falls asleep.
There's many an anecdote about babies who won't fall asleep unless jostled to rest by a car ride. Trying to drive a car inside a house is very difficult, so Ford whipped up a more elegant solution.
It's called Max Motor Dreams, and it brings the car to the cot. A phone app records a nighttime drive, and once everybody's back home, it tries to reproduce the experience of the drive using the cot.
This amber glow might not mean much to a kid who grows up under the bright, blue light of LED street lamps.
There's a small speaker underneath the cot that's meant to provide the muffled sound of an engine. Mechanicals underneath the cot produce gentle movement, simulating a car trip. The whole thing is capped off with a set of LED lights that provide the same warm glow that street lights do. It's all in the hopes of getting the little one to sleep faster.
"After many years of talking to mums and dads, we know that parents of newborns are often desperate for just one good night's sleep," said Alejandro López Bravo, the cot's designer. "But while a quick drive in the family car can work wonders in getting baby off to sleep, the poor old parents still have to be awake and alert at the wheel."
It's a brilliant idea, but sadly, you can't buy one... yet. Ford only built the one, as a pilot program to see if it was even worth pursuing. After a good deal of demand, though, the company is considering putting the Max Motor Dreams into production.