To the head and therefore reduce the risk of concussion or skull fracture, company officials told Scout Warrior.
The new helmet, which received a Round II award from the NFL’s Head Heath Challenge effort, uses a multi-layered design to absorb impact from a head-on or rotational side collision, said Dave Marver, CEO and Co-founder of Vicis, the commercial arm of the University of Washington’s effort.
“An outer layer works in concert with an impact-absorbing layer to slow or absorb the forces from impact. It is designed to optimize the helmet’s ability to absorb straight ahead or linear and rotational impacts,” Marver told Scout Warrior in an interview.
Marver added that, upon impact, collisions with the new helmet will sound more like a rubbery thump as opposed to a “crack.”
The University of Washington received $250,000 in award money on top of an initial $500,000 from the Head Health Challenge, a research and innovation effort run by the NFL, General Electric and Under Armour to develop new technologies able to better diagnose, prevent and treat concussions and head injuries such as traumatic brain injury.
While Vicis does not wish to discuss the specifics of the materials used in the new helmet, they do say they plan for it to be operational by 2016.
The helmet’s design, which is configured to look and feel like an existing helmet, has been tested with input from existing college football players.