A half of a solution for all of us who toss and turn in our sleep, but our beds are too narrow to allow for more than half a turn to either side, and we don't have room in our room for a bigger one.

A tubular bed.

A tube-shaped bed, inlaid with a tube-shaped matress, mounted on a mechanism that allows spinning around the longitudinal axis (or whatever they call a "from-head-towards-feet" axis these days), with enough inertia/friction to prevent it from swaying at every move you make, but that will rotate slowly if you lean your body to one side. You can turn as much as you like, and never run out of bed.

The foot of the bed and the bedstead would be open. The bed could have hinges and open, quite disturbingly, like a casket, or you could just clamber in through the opening at the foot of the bed.

The matress would be a bit thicker in the pillow area, to emulate, well, a pillow, thus providing a pillow for you no matter how far you roll; on a normal bed, you would run out of pillow sooner than you run out of bed.

The inside circumference would be large enough to make it feel like a normal, non-concave bed; the outside circumference would still fit the space of a normal single bed (approximately 1 metre in width), but you would be able to turn all you want.

The down side? It's mostly a single-user bed, sleeping-wise (I won't say anything about other activities of two or more persons in a bed, wink wink. No, wait. The cumulative imagination of you lot would supply ideas of bed-related group activities for months before getting even close to sex, so I'm just going to say it: sex.).

The up side: The bed can provide interesting new angles (literally) to any bed-related activity, provided you or your companion(s) have a place to actually sleep afterwards. This is a single bed, after all.

So, as I said, this is half of a solution to the tossing and turning problem, since this would only solve the turning part. I don't know about the tossing.

(Side note: Please point out any spelling, grammar or style errors in my text. Thank you.)
-- Veho, Dec 02 2006

Capsule hotel http://www.yesicanu...sticks.com/capsule/
Tiny rooms :) [Veho, Dec 05 2006]

Tubular capsule hotel http://bldgblog.blo...in-sleep-pipes.html
Just make these sleep pipes a little smaller and put them on rollers. [wiml, Dec 06 2006]

Veho, I like the idea but why should we have to point out your errors? Why not fix them yourself?
-- Chefboyrbored, Dec 02 2006


Incase he missed some
-- dev45, Dec 03 2006


What about the blankets? Won't they get all tangled?
-- PollyNo9, Dec 03 2006


/I don't know about the tossing. /

One could incorporate an icy shower?
-- bungston, Dec 03 2006


I shall bun this only because this is truely half-baked. If you were to consider the size and expense of the tube structure, you could have bought a bigger bed.
-- Jscotty, Dec 04 2006


//If you were to consider the size and expense of the tube structure, you could have bought a bigger bed.//

But I wouldn't have a place to keep it. As I wrote in the first paragraph, "we don't have room enough in our room for a bigger one".

This idea was inspired by a lack of space, not a lack of money :)

Kind of like the Japanese capsule hotels [link]. With a tubular bed, you could have a virtually endless bed inside a narrow capsule :)
-- Veho, Dec 05 2006


clever...but wouldnt getting in and out be a little awkward?
-- shinobi, Dec 06 2006


claustrophobic
-- pertinax, Dec 06 2006


I was thinking about the curvature of the bed and how I think that would really annoy me. Also if you did happen to have a guest with you then, like you said, it could be uncomfortable. However, because the mattress is flexible you could have the bed in the shape of a oval or soft cornered rectangle with the frame being a sort of tank tread-like thing. Using a sensor and ultra quiet motor the bed could always place you in the center whenever you started moving around in your sleep because you were dreaming of being run over by a tank in World War II.

I think the best way to handle blankets, at least when you are alone, is to sleep in a sleeping bag. Sorry, no overly complicated solution for this... yet.
-- NotTheSharpestSpoon, Dec 06 2006


Veho, the size of the bed would be an issue too. If the inside circumferance of the bed will be large enough for it to feel like a "normal" bed, then I imagine that the interpolated curvature of the tube will end up being larger than a king sized bed. But then again, this would actually be suitable if your needs extend past being able to roll over 2.5 times.
-- Jscotty, Dec 06 2006



random, halfbakery