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Intellicot - cot for high tech babies

By
Camilla Chafer
on April 20, 2006 TrackBacks (2) Comments (3)

IntellicotcotCots haven't had a revamp in years which is exactly why the Intellicot from Cencio is such a welcome addition to nurseries. Designed by four final year engineering students from Coventry University, the cot came third in the Ideal Home Show concept production competition.

When I first saw it featured on This Morning, I did think it was a bit naff. Why would parents want something so high tech? Was it just a way of getting more money from overstretched parents who already watch hawk like over baby?

But I'm pleased to say that the cot addresses real common place problems with out going overboard with needless contraptions...

Intellicotconcept1The cot features Video Monitoring - far more practical than audio listening devices which would make it not only ideal for deaf carers but also for hearing carers who can pick up the baby's visual cues.

Automatic rocking - Baby low chairs already feature this and parents naturally rock a child.

Raising - Standard cots generally have 2 or 3 positions for placing the mattress and by the time baby is bigger and the mattress is at the lowest point, bending to pick up junior can create back pain. Add in mothers who have undergone a caeserean or disabled parents who cannot bend and you'll see why automatic raising is fantastic.

Air circulation - Keeping baby cool on hot days can help improve sleep

Safety window - Traditional bars are replaced with a polycarbonate window meaning no more stuck limbs and a great, clear view for baby-gazing.

Storage - There's nothing clever about storage but it is useful.

I have two questions - can they bring in the design at a reasonable, competitive price? And finally, what have all the other nursery designers been doing if students clearly came up with one of the best innovations on the baby scene?

[Camilla Chafer]

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  • oh and by the way they weren't engineering students, they were industrial product design students.

    trust me it's different :D

  • Wahey thats my university and i know the designers, but they finished last year with that cot because they opted out of the placement year. This years show is in June, you at shiny shiny should come. :)

  • I think the answer to your question (what have other designers been doing) is that many people a generation or two older than today's students remember or have heard of B.F. Skinner's "baby tender," a vastly misunderstood device he invented in the 40s as an improvement over the traditional crib. For several decades rumors surrounded Skinner that he had kept his infant daughter in a glass-fronted box throughout her infancy, resulting in a woman who went insane and committed suicide. That's far from true, and results from a misconception that the baby tender was the same thing as a Skinner box, a laboratory tool for studying animal behavior (like when a bird hits a switch to get a food pellet, for instance). I know the Skinner-box controversy was the first thing I thought of when I saw this, and I'm only thirty-two. The idea of a barless, clear-fronted crib does make sense, and it always did, and it's nice that the further we get in time away from the 1950s, the more people don't make this connection.

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