Democratizing Brain Safety: The Tech Behind the Rumble Rims Headset

BOSTON – November 04, 2026 — In the high-stakes environment of professional sports, athletes suspected of sustaining a concussion are immediately rushed into medical tents equipped with cutting-edge diagnostic technology. But on the thousands of public school fields and community recreational leagues across the country, the reality is starkly different. Here, under-resourced coaches and volunteer athletic trainers are often left to rely on subjective "follow my finger" tests and self-reported symptoms to make critical medical decisions in the heat of the moment.

That glaring disparity in care is exactly what Harvard University students Cleo Pontone, Radhika Saran, and Sophia DeVito set out to eliminate. Their invention, a low-cost infrared eye-tracking headset called Rumble Rims, has just won the Global Medical category of the prestigious 2026 James Dyson Award. By bringing objective, hardware-based neurological screening directly to the sidelines, this student-led innovation is poised to democratize brain safety for millions of amateur athletes.

Selected from a record-breaking pool of 2,294 entries across 28 countries and regions, the Rumble Rims project secured a $40,000 prize from the James Dyson Foundation to accelerate its development. The foundation, established by Sir James Dyson in 2002, has a long history of backing transformative engineering, having donated over $210 million to charitable and educational causes worldwide. But beyond the impressive accolades and prize money, the true significance of Rumble Rims lies in its potential to fundamentally alter how we manage traumatic brain injuries at the grassroots level.

The Grassroots Concussion Crisis

Concussions represent one of the most urgent safety challenges in modern sports. When a mild traumatic brain injury goes unrecognized and an athlete is allowed to return to play, they face a dramatically increased risk of secondary impact syndrome—a potentially catastrophic swelling of the brain. The primary hurdle in preventing these secondary injuries is the elusive nature of concussion symptoms themselves. Neurological impairments can differ wildly from person to person, and critical symptoms may take up to 72 hours to fully manifest.

While objective assessment technologies do exist, they are historically confined to clinical settings due to their exorbitant costs and the need for specialized medical expertise to interpret the results. This leaves youth leagues and high school athletic departments in a dangerous predicament, relying heavily on subjective sideline judgment precisely when fast, informed decisions matter most.

Sir James Dyson highlighted this specific gap when selecting the winning team. "All too often, we hear of those having accidents involving head injuries, particularly amongst athletes, and suffering the consequences later in life," Dyson noted. "Yet spotting concussion is complex, requiring specialist equipment and hospital expertise, so screening isn't always done when it should be. Cleo, Radhika and Sophia have found a new way to bring objective screening to the sidelines, where the critical decisions are made. It could help prevent the lasting brain injuries that affect so many sportsmen and women."

The Science of Ocular Biomarkers

The clinical basis for using eye movement as a window into brain health is well-documented. In fact, medical historians note that Greek physicians were observing "askew eyes" as an indicator of brain injury over 3,500 years ago. Modern neurology has expanded on this ancient observation, establishing that visual impairments are incredibly common following a concussion because ocular movements require the rapid coordination of multiple complex neural pathways.

When the brain sustains an impact, these pathways are disrupted. Independent sports medicine researchers and neuro-ophthalmologists have demonstrated that concussed patients frequently exhibit specific, measurable deficits. These include convergence insufficiency (the inability of the eyes to focus together on a near point), saccadic dysfunction (problems with rapid eye movements), and impaired smooth pursuit (the inability to smoothly track a moving object).

Traditional sideline tests attempt to gauge these functions manually, but human observation is notoriously flawed when measuring micro-movements of the eye. Rumble Rims removes the human error from the equation entirely. During a brief two- to three-minute test, the headset's infrared cameras precisely measure how an athlete's eyes follow, fixate, and move. These behavioral metrics provide an objective indication of neurological impairment that is virtually impossible for a concussed athlete to mask or "tough out."

From Mouthguards to Dichroic Mirrors

The journey to the final Rumble Rims prototype was a masterclass in human-centered design and iterative engineering. The Harvard trio initially explored various form factors, moving through early prototypes that incorporated sensors into helmets, mouthguards, and chin rests. However, through continuous feedback from medical professionals and coaches, they realized that a dedicated headset offered the optimal balance of stability, accuracy, and ease of use.

The current award-winning design utilizes side-mounted infrared cameras combined with 45-degree dichroic mirrors. This specific optical arrangement allows the device to capture high-fidelity ocular data without obstructing the athlete's field of view, ensuring a natural visual response during the screening process. The hardware links directly to a mobile display, which translates the complex ocular measurements into real-time, actionable guidance for sideline staff.

Shuya Gong, Faculty of the Master's in Design Engineering at Harvard, praised the team's methodology. "What impressed me most about Cleo, Sophia, and Radhika was how, through rapid prototyping and curious experimentation, they found elegant ways to test ambitious ideas while holding themselves to the conviction that their solution should be affordable and easy to use, whether on the sidelines or at home," Gong said. "Rumble Rims is a fantastic collision of designing for care and engineering rigor."

Navigating the Regulatory Tightrope

Beyond the engineering achievements, the strategic positioning of Rumble Rims reveals a sophisticated understanding of the medical technology landscape. The creators have explicitly defined the system as a "screening tool" rather than a "diagnostic device." This is a critical distinction that will profoundly impact their commercial and regulatory roadmap.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration heavily regulates diagnostic equipment. Devices that claim to definitively diagnose a concussion—such as the FDA-cleared EyeBOX or Oculogica's SNAP—must undergo rigorous clinical trials and navigate complex clearance pathways like the 510(k) or De Novo processes. By positioning Rumble Rims strictly as a screening aid that informs whether an athlete should be removed from play and referred for professional assessment, the team lowers their immediate regulatory burden while simultaneously reducing the liability for the schools and youth programs that adopt the technology.

The device does not make the final return-to-play decision; that authority remains firmly with qualified healthcare professionals. Instead, it provides an objective data point to justify removing a player from the field, overcoming the common cultural pressure in sports to keep playing through the pain.

The Path to the Sidelines

The $40,000 prize from the James Dyson Award will be instrumental in bridging the gap between a promising university prototype and a commercially viable product. The team has outlined a clear development pipeline: building a higher-fidelity prototype, refining their proprietary eye-movement assessment algorithms, and conducting extensive validation trials with athletes, coaches, and medical advisors.

A particularly compelling feature of the Rumble Rims ecosystem is its longitudinal recovery dashboard. The utility of the device extends far beyond the initial sideline screening. By enabling repeat testing over time, the system creates an objective, historical record of an athlete's ocular function. This data can be invaluable for families and clinicians monitoring the rehabilitation process, ensuring that an athlete's neural pathways have fully recovered before they are cleared for contact sports.

As the sports technology market continues to pivot toward objective digital biomarkers, Rumble Rims stands out not just for its technical ingenuity, but for its commitment to accessibility. The inventors recognize that true innovation must be scalable to the communities that need it most.

"The recognition from the James Dyson Award validates our belief that we don't have to accept problems as they stand today," the trio stated upon winning the award. "Concussions in youth sports have become something we treat as routine, despite their long-term neurological impact. We can challenge norms like this one and design a more usable, accessible world where technology reaches people when they need it most, not after the damage is done. This award gives us an incredible opportunity to progress towards pilots that could put Rumble Rims on every sideline."

With grassroots athletic programs desperately seeking affordable ways to protect their young participants, the successful commercialization of this hardware could mark a turning point in sports medicine. The transition from a university lab to the muddy sidelines of a high school football game is fraught with challenges, but by prioritizing affordability and objective data, Rumble Rims is charting a course to make comprehensive brain safety a standard feature of youth sports, rather than a luxury reserved for the pros.