You're in a nasty bike accident during rush hour. Nobody stops to help, but your helmet detects that you have sustained a nasty blow to the head and automatically calls 911. The "smart" bike helmet idea, one of five winners in Toyota's Ideas For Good competition, is currently being worked on by engineers from Deeplocal and Carnegie Mellon University.
The Toyota competition, which ended this week, challenged entrants to repurpose Prius technology for use outside of the automotive arena. The bike helmet idea is inspired by T.H.U.M.S. (Total HUman Model for Safety) technology--a piece of simulation software that Toyota uses to measure injury to body parts that can't be detected using conventional crash test dummies.
"We abstracted from that and said let's start with a circuit that's one inch by half an inch, two accelerometers, and three gyroscopes," says Nathan Martin, CEO of Deeplocal. It's a setup that could allow users to track ultra-high impacts (up to 250 g's) as well as movement and tilt. "We can record what's going on with the head as its moving, and see how is it moving up to 400 times per second," explains Martin.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Bike Helmet Of The Future Could Detect Traumatic Head Injuries | Fast Company
Author:Ariel Schwartz
