All team sports can be rough, but hockey carries a particularly high risk of brain injury. A new high-tech his helmet is designed to warn of such injuries by detecting and reporting impacts to the wearer’s head.
The helmet is being developed by Swiss startup Bearmind in partnership with the EPFL research institute. Two former athletes, Mathieu Fabriard and Tom Bertrand, founded the company.
In its current form, the Bearmind helmet looks a lot like any other hockey helmet, except for the fact that it has a small oval module that fits into a receptacle on the back. It contains sensors, batteries, and a Bluetooth module. When the helmet undergoes a sudden impact, the module sends impact data to an app attached to the rink-side coach’s smartphone.
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The app displays the severity of the impact and compares it to a database of head impacts typically experienced by hockey players. If the app determines that this particular impact could cause brain damage, it will alert the coach, who can seek medical attention for that individual. The app also records the frequency of impacts for certain players, so coaches can determine if any are particularly prone to accidents.
The current version of the helmet has been tested by two western Swiss hockey teams. That said, Falbriard and Bertrand are already working to integrate all sensing hardware directly into the padding of the helmet, ditching external modules. Testing of that version of the helmet should begin next hockey season.
“Our goal is to allow athletes to monitor their neurological condition in the same way that coaches monitor their physical and mental condition,” Bertrand said.
Source: EPFL
