Nintendo / Panasonic pick up patents for light devices that can help you relax and wake up

Several years ago, Nintendo announced plans to pursue “Quality of Life” technology. Nothing ever panned out, but the goal was to create something that would be able to address sleep and fatigue. Quality of Life was all but presumed dead at this point in large part because we’ve yet to see anything from the initiative, but interesting patents were filed this year may have some connections.

Nintendo and Panasonic filed for two light device patents in the United States back on February 24. Both involve helping the user either relax or wake up. We’re only hearing about this now since the applications were finally published on September 6.

Here’s an abstract from one of the filings:

A light emission control device includes a light emission controller which controls a light emitter and performs normal control and wake-up control, the normal control being control for causing the light emitter to emit light having a color temperature and luminance according to an instruction of a user, the wake-up control being control for causing the light emitter to emit light at increasing luminance over time to wake up the user who is sleeping. The maximum luminance of light emitted by the light emitter in the wake-up control is greater than the maximum luminance of light emitted by the light emitter in the normal control.

There’s more to be seen from the filings here. Whether the trademark turns into something tangible remains to be seen.