Paul Cherukuri, PhD, Executive Director of Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering at Rice University, Mac Carr, undergraduate electrical engineer, and Grant Belton, lead design engineer talk about a new technology called the Smart Helmet that protects soldiers’ heads in combat.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News in March 2022.
Why did you decide to focus on helmets?
CHERUKURI: This was actually a problem that was brought to us by the military. The Office of Naval Research that’s supporting this project asked if we would consider building a new prototype helmet for their soldiers, sailors, and Marines. This was apparently a deep need because the helmet hasn’t evolved much over the last 50 years. The materials have changed but the helmet has stayed functional. It protects against blast or injury from bullet but not much more. So, it’s a lot of empty space that you could use if you redesigned it. That was something that the military asked us to do. It sounded like a very tough problem, so, that’s what we were interested in because how do you add something to the helmet without increasing its mass but keep its performance? That was a curious problem that we could solve, at the same time maybe, get a practical solution out.
Are TBIs one of the most prevalent injuries that are coming out of the wars today?
CHERUKURI: Yes, mild TBI, in particular. Right now, our technology doesn’t allow us to do that. Can we prevent mild TBI, which are the majority of sort of traumatic brain injuries? Not the massive traumatic brain injuries that you already see, but something that’s a little bit more subtle. Can we protect against that? Can the system that we’re building, the smart helmet, detect that before or after the injury occurs? Can we monitor it and then be able to move forward? But we wanted to build in as much of an electronic system into the helmet so that we could not only monitor the health of the warfighter but also monitor what’s happening around the individual. So, if there is anything approaching the soldier that is a threat, the helmet will tell you that. That was the concept behind it.
The key element of any helmet has to be to deflect and protect from shrapnel or bullets. So, do you start with that and then move on from there?
CHERUKURI: What we’re doing is addressing the problem in three areas, both the helmet protection itself, fundamentally, change the material so that it’s much stronger and lighter. The reason we’re wanting to make it lighter is not only because we want to reduce the weight on the soldier, but we need to add other things to it to make it smart. But the helmet has to have a redesign. That’s why we employed the Carbon 3D printer to print a very lightweight, strong material and then, integrate our electronics into it. That was the key aspect of it. The very first thing is it’s got to protect the soldier against blasts and bullets. To do that, we’ve got to make a new material and we’ve got to design the material in a way that’s much more robust, and that’s the lattice structure that carbon gives us. That was the whole concept of why we wanted to go with the Carbon system.
BELTON: The thing about these smart helmets is that they are based off a football helmet. But the key to the smart helmet and the protection that it provides is that the lattice structure that we can print uses a semi-rigid material, but the actual structure of this material that is 3D printed and can be changed through the various areas.
Which material is the strongest?
CHERUKURI: It’s one of the lighter materials. The reason is because you have this polymer base and instead of using something that’s much more rigid and as soft as polymer, you can design a lattice structure. The lattice structure gives you this rigidity and compressibility that you can get in a print structure, and that’s what’s unique about the Carbon. The other part of it is not only is that the polymer, but it’s the speed. We can take something that’s designed on that printer and go to manufacturing very quickly. We design on the same system that you’re making on, and that’s why Carbon was an important aspect of it.
Can the smart aspects of it also be implemented with the printer?
CHERUKURI: So, that’s secondary. The print is going to come up and out and you’ll see that in the printer. It comes up and out of the pool, Terminator style. Then, after you process it and clean it up, you can integrate the components. But we’re designing the helmet structure so that you can pop in the different electronic components that we need customized to the individual. Whether it’s a soldier, sailor, or Marine, they have different environments that they have to go into. If you talk to the soldiers, they all have different functions. So, we can design the helmet structure so that we can have those modular components integrated as we need after the print.
Can you list some of the things that this helmet will be able to do?
CHERUKURI: Yeah. So, the coolest part of it is not only are we making the new material in the printer, but the smart aspect is we’re putting onboard sensors, which are some of the things that are built into the watches that we wear, like the Apple watches or the Fitbits, which are PPG sensors. These are able to measure your blood pressure or your heart rate, and your heart rate variability. Can we do that in the helmet? Yes. We can integrate those sensors, which are immediately off the shelf available. Then, the other thing that we’re putting in is the Flatcam, which is built here by my colleague Ashok Veeraraghavan. He makes the world’s smallest camera, which is just a thin piece of silicon without a lens. You take the lens off and the whole thing shrinks down. That’s one of the reasons your phone is so thick. It’s not only the battery, but it’s the lens in the camera. Get rid of the lens and you can use computational imaging to get the image back. That’s what we’re building into the helmet, making this a sensor not only for getting your vitals, but also seeing around you. That’s part of the smart aspect of it. But can we integrate all of that and make it lightweight with the batteries and all the structures that are built in? That’s where the research side comes in. That’s why you got to do it in a university.
What will the flat cam allow the helmet to do?
CHERUKURI: The Flatcam gives you the ability to put in a very small device into the helmet. The helmet is much smaller and lighter weight than you normally would get. Then, the other capability is that the same system can be used not only for the visible, but also different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, so you can see deeper into the body, but also see around you without having to require a lens structure. You can do all that computationally, now. You don’t really need a lens anymore. If we can get our computational power up and capture the image, then you can have more capability.
What would you be able to do with that information?
CHERUKURI: One of the problems the soldiers have told us about being out in the field is that they’re out there on recon or they’re in the middle of a scenario, and they ask if we can provide information to them that they’re not aware of. We want to be able to see further than your normal eyes or your normal hearing can detect. That’s the capability that we’re getting. So, we’re building infrared cameras into the helmet as a first level. We put in a heads-up display with a thermal image. Then, you can see deeper into the woods, and you may not be able to differentiate something in the dark that’s at a further distance. But now, with the thermal sensors, you should be able to. That’s one new capability. Can you see behind you? Lots of our cars have rearview capability. Can we put that into a helmet? It just hasn’t been done yet, not for the military. That’s something that we are doing. The other thing is we’re getting a 360-degree view. So, the soldier will always be aware because the system will be aware of what the threats are. And before you notice it, the helmet will alert you that there’s something happening that you didn’t know about. It’s the future and we’re trying to bring it forward. That’s the idea. We see a lot of things in movies that are not possible. These are all things that are possible. The physics doesn’t prevent us from doing any of this. This just hasn’t been integrated before into a single platform, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re taking the components, taking the computational power, and slapping it into the helmet structure. But to do that, we’ve got to redesign the helmet so that it’s more effective.
Is the helmet also going to be able to tell whether you have a concussion or a TBI?
CHERUKURI: So, currently, football helmets are printed on the same printer that we are using for the military helmet. 3D-printed helmets are manufactured by Riddell. They have concussion sensors built in, so they are able to have concussion capability. What we want to be able to do is get something a little bit more subtle because, whether you’re impacted on a football field versus whether you have a blast or an impact in an open field, that’s a very different scenario. So, we are using what we’ve learned from athletes to be able to parlay that into something for the military. That’s the concept behind it. It just hasn’t been done. Current military helmets don’t have this capability built in. Some companies are exploring it, but I think we’re the first ones trying to rebuild the full helmet from the ground up. That’s what this whole project is about.
Is the 3D printing part of it vital?
CHERUKURI: It is vital. It’s interesting, I talked to a major helmet manufacturer who was interested that we were doing this because we will be undercutting their market and they’re a little worried. One of the companies has the world’s most expensive military helmet and it costs $400,000. We can do better than that by going to additive manufacturing, using 3D printing, and integrating it from the bottom up. We don’t have to worry about cutting into any product line because we’re not developing products, we’re developing prototypes that could become productized by another company. We are only worried about producing the capability. We want the soldiers to benefit. So, that’s why we said, let’s go from the bottom up, let’s do it from a 3D print, use all the technology that we have to throw at this problem. Then, get the students to work on it in a very creative way – because that’s what students do – and then go forward fast. Then, with the printer, we can actually print it up and go to manufacturing very quickly. A company can then take it over.
Is it something that can be done non-expensively?
CHERUKURI: I think so. And the reason I say that is because the sensor components are commodity items now. You can buy them very cheap. The kinds of capabilities we’re introducing in the first rev of this are very basic. They’re just fundamental things. Can you protect me while I’m on the field? Can you give me more information without affecting my ability to do my job out on the field? Yes, we can answer those questions today, we just haven’t manufactured them. The reason is because to get the Carbon, you have to be able to go to manufacture very quickly, right? So, we’re doing this in three years and that’s a hard lift to go from idea to prototype and then get it out the door within three years. Not easy, but we’ve done harder things.
Are you excited about this?
CHERUKURI: Yes! This keeps us up at night in a good way. This is something that I think we can develop. The students keep us driving forward because they are super excited by it. And when students are excited about it, it’s going to get done, not us old people. So, I think that’s a great aspect of it.
Can you explain the components of the Google Glass?
CARR: Sure. So, this is the actual augmented reality display. It’s going to display all of the information that we’re sending it currently. We’re sending that information over USB from a Raspberry Pi, which is a minicomputer, which is just processing all the data that we’re getting from our thermal cameras, right now. The Polar Sense, which is getting the PPG data that Professor Cherukuri mentioned earlier that rests on the temple, gets heart rate data, and sends it to the Google Glass to display on one of our panels.
Is this the first time that you’re going to have 360 with the helmet?
CARR: Right now, we have a 110-degree view. We’re taking two thermal cameras and we are stitching together their images so that we can accurately analyze the thermal data from them to detect whether or not there’s a threat in the area. We’ve proven that we can do it using two cameras. We are currently ordering more cameras so that we can attach one to the back and then one to the left so we can get a full 360-degree view.
What makes the smart helmet so special?
BELTON: The thing that makes it special is that, depending on where on the helmet it is, it’s going to be subject to different forces. So, you’d be able to add or remove either resilience or cushioning by location. So, instead of having a big chunk of foam that’s inside a helmet that squishes the same amount no matter how it gets hit, with this, you can have an area that squishes very easily, or you can have more reinforcement in a specific area that is firmer. So, it can provide a much more customized and tailored fit to how the forces go through the helmet.
Would each helmet always have a strong frontal lobe and a weaker part of this? Or is every single person’s going to be different?
BELTON: I suspect that it would be tailored for a specific role more than to a specific person. If a person had a big head or a small head, that might be different. But I think it would be OK. This is a helmet that’s going to be used on an aircraft carrier, so they’re going to need to have these capabilities. They’re likely to be subject to these specific forces versus a helmet that’s going to be used in the field and has to have these capabilities to stand up to these forces.
How would the lattice work be different on one helmet?
BELTON: The lattice would change throughout the helmet. A specific area would be hit directly from the top and it wouldn’t have to have as much padding so it could be lighter. Conversely, in the front, if a thing that’s going to get knocked against a lot and near the edge where, just as the soldier’s running around, they’d be able to give it a lot more abuse. Things are going to be being used day in and day out and you want to have them be as light and as comfortable as possible while still providing all the necessary details.
How long does it take to make something like that?
BELTON: A print like this of one of these printers can be done in a couple of hours. To manufacture this with traditional methods is impossible. With a traditional machining operation, you’ve got to come in with a drill bit or a mill or another tool to remove the material, and there’s just no way that you’d be able to get inside. So, the structures that we’re creating on this helmet are impossible to create without a 3D printer. So, this is a brand-new area of manufacturing.
END OF INTERVIEW
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