Hövding Personal Airbag, Invisible Helmet

“The Invisible Helmet”

The helmet, despite being a smart wear and crucial for risk takers, is often associated with being uncool and looking funny. What these people don’t realize is that breaking your neck and dying is similarly uncool. Lucky for those unwilling to buckle in, two Swedish designers have come up with a gadget that could revolutionize the head protection industry.

Their company is called Hövding, and their outside the box thinking has generated a future helmet that is statistically three times better than it’s competition. The award winning and aptly named invisible helmet looks like a scarf, but is actually a high tech piece of art designed to protect the human brain. Here’s a video of the product debut.

The Hovding collar, selling for $500, is outfitted with built in accelerometers and gyroscopes. Within 1/10th of a second of an impact, the personal airbag can sense a disturbance and inflate itself using helium gas. Not only are the top and sides of the cranium protected, the neck is shielded as well.

When put to the test against the top competition that the helmet industry had to offer, Hovding rose to the top. Not only was it just as effective, the force felt on the human head in similar tests was 1/3 the amount of the closest competitor. Where in the past we’ve felt 200 G’s of force in a 15 MPH bicycle collision, enough to induce a concussion, users wearing the Hovding felt just 65 G’s.

“Compared to those normal helmets, the Hovding impact was so soft – like a mattress – the head would not even feel it.” -Hövding creator Anna Haupt

If perfected, this technology could trickle down to and revolutionize safety in some of the world’s most dangerous sports such as snow and skateboarding. Not only that, the personal airbag will provide a great alternative to the idiots who are concerned that wearing a helmet will ruin their hair.

Hövding via Gizmag

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