By Quentin Paimparay

Four students from Imperial College London have recently designed a new kind of prototype trousers called “Bruise” which detects potential injuries due to sport.

How it works?

The “Bruise trousers” is a white injury detection suit that athletes wear during the sporting event. When an injury occurs, the trousers change colour to red at the point of impact where the wearer has been hit. There are different markings to differentiate the strength of the force.

Who’s it for?

This innovative trousers prototype will suit people who have no nerve feelings in their arms or in their legs and who can find it hard to judge the severity of impacts. Indeed, often people do not know they have been injured because they cannot feel the pain. This lack of sense could generate serious health problems and severe bruises can go unnoticed.

The “bruise trousers” could be used by people to increase their wellbeing and to monitor their health. Also, it could obviously help healthcare professionals to spot serious injuries. The “bruise trousers” could be used in a lot of sports including motor-racing, sit ski and wheelchair basketball. They have already been trialled by disabled motorcycle riders who have been delighted by the project.

Why was it developed?

The prototype was unveiled at the Rio Tinto Sports Innovation Challenge: a programme devoted to students who design equipment for disabled people, especially athletes. The four students who developed this prototype are design engineering students. They got the concept idea after a discussion with the paralympian skier Talan Skeels-Piggins. He noticed that it could be tricky to know what sections of the body may be injured following a sport game. Once the four students had the idea in mind, they designed the bruise trousers as part of their course in Innovation Design Engineering and Global Innovation Design. Currently, the bruise trousers are not commercially available but tests are being performed in order to improve the prototype.

How is it made?

The “Bruise trousers” is made with light-fitting and breathable white Lycra which is lined with pockets containing strips of a pressure-reactive film. The pockets which are sewn are based over the thorax, pelvis and leg bones.
The film used releases a magenta dye from microcapsules when an impact is received. The stronger the impact is, the darker the colour of the stain will be. The film is developed by specialised companies to assist paraplegic people to detect the damage to the body following an injury. Constant research goes on in labs to test the reaction of the film to different levels of force. These different impacts show the ones that sportspeople could feel throughout a game.

The four students who developed the”bruise trousers” continue to work on the prototype in the hope to develop in the near future an entire bruise suit and then to make it commercially available. They also intend to explore further applications and to develop a product line.

Since 2013, bespoken has run the annual “Student Design Award” which is intended to discover and champion a brilliant idea or design by a student. If you are a student and are interested in taking part, click here

Also, if you want to get more information about the “bruise trousers”, click here.

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Like what you just read? Check out the links below for more articles on bespoken.

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