Sensor Football Helmet Detects Harshed Melon
Perhaps in the not-so-distant future, when Patriots Running Back, Lawrence Maroney starts acting a little daffy after running the ball one too many times "up the gut", the training and medical staff of the Pats can defer to the data collected in his helmet recorded over the last few drives up field.
Sports equipment manufacturer Riddell is developing new sensor-equipped helmet technology that will flag those crushing blows to the noggin as detected by a series of on-board accelerometers. And there's some big money that could follow behind this tech, as you can imagine...
"To shed light on the biomechanical causes of concussions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is currently funding a five-year study using data from the football teams at Virginia Tech, Brown University, and Dartmouth College. But the team system is "pretty expensive--$60,000 to $70,000. And with the individual helmet, you can receive the same type of data for about $1,000," says Thad Ide, Riddell's vice president of research and development."
You can almost here it now. "Wow that was some bell-ringing Rex Grossman took courtesy of Bruschi on that play. He folded up like a little school girl with full 8.37 Gs detected on the melon-meter!"... Cool, you never can have too many stats.
What's the trading symbol for Riddell anyway?
