Automotive airbags have long been renowned for their swift deployment – often within mere milliseconds – to safeguard occupants. What if your knees could deploy airbags to cushion impact, reducing the risk of injury and improving recovery from sports-related trauma?
Former collegiate basketball player Kylin Shaw has turned his focus to entrepreneurship, co-founding a startup developing a cutting-edge “knee sleeve” that tracks stress levels on the knee joint and provides real-time support to prevent severe injuries such as ACL tears. Here is the rewritten text:
Within a remarkably short span of 30 milliseconds, the sleeve inflates, reportedly outpacing the time it takes – approximately 60 milliseconds – for an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tear to occur, according to corporate claims.
“I’ve had a lifelong passion for basketball, dating back to when I was just six years old,” Shaw told TechCrunch.
As a young player on the cusp of realizing his basketball dreams, he dedicated himself to rigorous coaching… But just as he was preparing to launch his collegiate career and compete in NCAA trials at 17, a sudden, jarring sound – like a sickening pop – echoed through the gymnasium as he landed awkwardly from a dunk.
Despite the injury ending his athletic career, Shaw found inspiration in developing an innovative solution that combined AI-driven sensors with a “knee bag,” prompting him to leave the London College of Economics to pursue this venture.
By harnessing the power of predictive AI, Hippos’ innovative brace technology enables real-time detection of potentially hazardous movements, deploying strategically placed airbags around the knee to prevent injury and significantly reduce medical expenses for athletes by thousands of dollars.
Initially, Shaw and CTO Bhavy Metakar invested $1,000 of their own capital to bootstrap Hippos, funding the development of a prototype and securing initial pre-orders from clinics and athletes by leveraging their personal financial resources. The startup has successfully secured a pre-seed investment of $642,000 from reputable venture capital firms, including Attainable Ventures and Silicon Roundabout Ventures.
Shaw told TechCrunch that the company has already garnered over six figures in pre-orders, and plans to utilize the fresh funding to refine the product and accelerate its full-scale launch within the next three months.
The wearable device is expected to retail around $129, accompanied by a monthly subscription service ranging from $29 to $99 that will provide users with AI-generated analytics, compact oxygen tanks, and physical activity tracking features.
The startup has conducted successful trials in the UK. Soccer and golf equipment are now complemented by top-notch athletes, including global stars such as U.S. snowboarder Alex Schlopy, a world champion. Ski Workforce. Schlopy announced that he was impressed by the product’s preventive capabilities, noting that they felt remarkably gentle and comfortable. “This particular armchair provides me with a sense of psychological security.”
Previous elite athletes, according to Shaw, suggested that this product could potentially be utilized for damage prevention purposes by anyone, including those involved in developmental stages of life or seniors.
While hippos are powerful animals, pushing at an open door seems a misnomer; they’re better known for their strength in water than opening doors. While approximately 150,000 ACL injuries occur annually in the United States, with an additional 8.6 million affecting adults, this data does not account for incidents involving children. Unfortunately, many wellness options focus primarily on rehabilitation rather than prevention.
Firms specializing in joint safety for sports and rehabilitation focus primarily on traditional support systems or post-injury assistance measures, neglecting the importance of preventive strategies?
Manufacturers in this space incorporate Enovis’ orthopedic braces and solutions, ExoKinetics’ units tailored to rehabilitation, and other brands offering sports activity braces and protective gear for injury management. The innovative technology of the Hippos airbag does not rely on predictive or reactive know-how in its mechanism.
Taking part in the sphere were Huggingface’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Thomas Wolf; Wayve’s co-founder, Amar Shah; and Dr. Dr. James Brown, Lead Sports Medicine Physician for UK Athletics.
