For the third year in a row, Farnell element14 is proud to be an official partner of Startupbootcamp IoT, an intensive three-month acceleration program for tech-based startups. We recently traveled to Startupbootcamp IoT's London headquarters to meet the participating startups for the 2018 cohort.
Introducing ORB Innovations
ORB is a UK-based startup that is developing a smart mouth guard that will collect biometric data to provide previously un-obtainable health and performance data to prevent injuries and misdiagnosis of head injuries and improve the performance of sports players and athletes.
How it works
Head injuries are a major cause of concern in professional sports, particularly in contact sports such as Rugby and American Football. Misdiagnosed head injuries can lead to major long-term health problems and in some cases preventable fatalities. ORB's smart mouth guard contains a number of small sensors that can safely and unobtrusively collect biometric data on the pitch, feeding it back to players, coaches and health professionals to assist in rapid diagnosis when things go wrong. This data can also be used to provide detailed performance feedback that can help players to stay 'match fit' and reduce the chances of sustaining other kinds of injury.
The Build
The Smart mouth guard is based on a custom-designed circuit board, necessitated by the relatively small working area available to fit the sensors comfortably into the athletes mouth. It is based on an ATMEL processor with embedded software written by the ORB Innovations team. The software is written in C++ code and uploaded to the device using an AVR programmer.
The USP
"Our product collects data that has never been available before on the playing field" explains ORB director Robert Paterson. "Right now our biggest technical challenges are sourcing the components and miniaturising them down to a size that we need. Once we've achieved this, our long term goal is to be able to identify concussion at the point of occurrence on the pitch, which will give us a major competitive advantage in the market of sports injury prevention."
Joining the Startupbootcamp IoT Program...
The location of the Startupbootcamp IoT program was a major selling point to Paterson and his team. "The fact that the program is based in London gives us access to enormous amounts of resources in the area and a fantastic network of mentors" he explains. "These are the tools we're hoping to use to refine our business model and our hardware product, ultimately allowing us to offer an affordable, effective device that can be adopted from grassroots to professionals in a wide variety of sports."
We'll be continuing to check in with ORB innovations and the other Startupbootcamp IoT 2018 participants over the coming weeks, so keep checking this space for more updates. You can also learn more about ORB on their official website and on the Startupbootcamp website.
