There are never enough hours in a day, our over-connected culture often says. But connected devices worn nightly do not aim to lengthen our days with more tasks; instead, they help us optimize the hours we do sleep, and thus improve the quality of our working and playing hours.

For some, better sleep is achieved through lucid dreaming, or being aware that you are dreaming, an experience said to lower stress and improve performance at tasks you "practice" in dreams.

See also: The Gadget That Reaches Inside Your Dreams

Lucid dreaming is explored and encouraged through conferences and online forums, and now, gadgets. The Aurora headband, from iWinks, debuted on Kickstarter this month and has already raised double its goal.

Aurora is worn like a headband and takes a measurement of brain waves through a user's forehead to determine when REM sleep is attained, and then uses both lights on the headband and audio from the users's smartphone to alert the user that she is dreaming (while hopefully not waking her up in the process).

It's sort of like training wheels for someone who wants to try lucid dreaming but hasn't been able to do it on their own. For an experienced lucid dreamer, it provides greater control in initiating the experience.

The Aurora headband can be used on its own, without a device (although the audio cues are only available with a smartphone) and will sync with apps on desktop, iOS and Android.

Rising Interest in Dreaming

Another Kickstarter success, Remee, raised nearly $600,000 for its sleep mask (retails for $95) which does not detect REM sleep but simply relies on time intervals to decide when to cue the user to lucid dreaming. Elsewhere in sleep tech, apps Dream:ON and Shadow allow users to influence and record dreams, respectively.

According to Google Trends, interest in lucid dreaming began rising in mid-2010 (not surprisingly, around the same time the film Inception, which depicts other-world adventures accessed in dreams, was released) and peaks in March 2012.

Potential Applications

The future of lucid dreaming may enable us to connect not only with our subconscious, but with others in the process. iWinks, the company behind the Aurora headband, plans to open its API so other developers can build further uses for the device.

Daniel Schoonover, founder of iWinks, says the device could make it possible for people around the world to have dreams together. A unique stimulus such as a honking horn would indicate to both users that they are both in the dream (so they would need to have REM sleep concurrently) and gestures such as eye movement could ping the other person. Schoonover notes social lucid dreaming is "out there" and not yet scientifically documented, but the present features of Aurora are based on scientific studies.

The iOS and Android apps that pair with Aurora also come with an alarm clock that will wake up a user at the optimal part of the sleep cycle. The Aurora will cost $175 and ships in June.

Image: iWinks