Core77

Smart Sporting Goods Design: An Impact-Detecting Mouthguard Tells You When to Pull a Player Off the Field

By Rain Noe - June 9, 2014

in Tech | Medical

I played crease attack on my high school's lacrosse team, and I sucked. The first two years I got laid out so many times while trying to set picks that by junior year, I'd accepted my complete lack of athletic ability and hung up the stick for good. (Frankly speaking the coach probably would have cut me anyway.)

Back then, it was rare to see the coach bench a player for safety reasons after he'd gotten his bell rung; it was the age of "Walk it off," where there simply wasn't concern for the concussed. But nowadays we're all well aware of the deleterious effects of a concussion, and until full-contact sports change in nature, there's room for design to try to make a difference. Designing stronger helmets sounds like a good move—but actually makes it worse. Players are emboldened by improved shielding and thus hit harder, causing more damage.The guys over at Force Impact Technologies, however, have struck upon something that can help. Their forthcoming FITGuard is a special mouthguard that can detect the severity of an impact, and sports an LED light on the front of it that can be seen when a player opens his mouth. The LED changes color depending on how hard the hit was, providing coaches with a handy visual indicator: Green means you're good-to-go, red means there's a 50% chance of being concussed. And the FITGuard can even beam an analysis of the force over to a smartphone.

The video's a bit cheesy, but doesn't detract from the smartness of the product:

o

Favorite This
Q
4

Comment

Comments

C

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

You guys do realize that is most likely just a simple prototype render. They obviously have some work to do..
I've seen a few mouth guards and they aren't overly complicated.
Chilll :)
!Report as spam
Ben

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

I've worked on these specifically and can say this looks horrible. As a concept sure, it all sounds and looks relatively wonderful. But that mouth guard will never go in someones mouth, the size is just huge! While I hope the size is proportionate to the amount of electronics that will go into the mouth guard, but honestly that thing will never fit comfortable in ones mouth. The guard will have to be heated and press fitted into the mouth which will require high heat resistant electrical components. Unless you use dental molds which then need to be transferred to the mouth guard which will create higher costs not to mention entirely different materials. Another thing is what is this thing measuring? If its just an accelerometer this thing could be going off on just basic moves the player makes. I believe a device like this could be something ground breaking in the longevity of athletic careers but a lot more work needs to be seen on this concept for me to believe any of these statements.
!Report as spam
Tom Mc

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Is it prohibitively expensive?
!Report as spam
dc_design

11 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

I think the concept is spot on and timely, but I have to say, the form does not speak to anything that would go in or near the mouth. It looks way too angular and chamfered for something that would fit the organic contours of the mouth.

Take a peek at other mouthgards/alignment devices/whitening products for some inspiration if you want to push this concept even further.
!Report as spam