Concussion Coach

New page

Overview

Concussions can have a severe and lasting impact on individual, and while coaches and athletes alike are aware of this danger, many concussions continue to go unrecognized. In football especially, concussions occur regularly due to the contact nature of the sport. While better protection and more careful playing an be used to prevent players from getting concussions, it is just as important to diagnose and treat concussions that do occur. Most concussions deliver ~95 g's to the body, so by measuring the amount of force applied to a player's head, the likelihood of a concussion could be monitored and the player could be checked when enough force was applied to cause a concussion.

Team Members

Colton Farley Darby Hakken Emma Zastrow

Objective

The objective of our project is to create a football helmet that can accurately sense the force applied during any head blow. This information should then be available to coaches and other team members on the sideline through an interface that contains data for all of the players on the team. Therefore, the coaches can monitor the amount of force applied to each player's head, and when a force of a significant threshold is applied, the coach will be notified so that the player can be removed from the game and checked out. Therefore, concussions can be diagnosed quickly so the player is given time to rest and recover without inflicting further damage.

Challenges

One possible challenge is being able to sense force equally throughout all parts of the helmet instead of just distinct points where sensors are located.