The Engineer

Rheon Labs and Xenith awarded NFL grant for safer helmet

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The US National Football League (NFL) has awarded London tech start-up Rheon Labs and Xenith a $412,000 grant toward Project Orbit, an effort to develop a safer helmet for NFL players.

NFL awarded $1.37m in HeadHealthTECH grant funding to four teams to support the creation of helmet prototypes to be submitted as part of the ongoing NFL Helmet Challenge. The challenge culminates in July 2021 with applicants submitting helmet prototypes for lab tests that represent potentially concussive impacts in the NFL, with an additional award of up to $1m.

Solving one of sport’s biggest headaches

“This grant marks a significant next step in Rheon’s partnership with Xenith to redefine performance in American Football through energy control,” said Dr Dan Plant, Founder and CTO of Rheon Labs.

Xenith is a Detroit-based designer and manufacturer of sports products. The company partnered with Rheon Labs in 2019 in the development of the Xenith Shadow XR, a helmet with an energy control cell that cushions low-speed impacts but strengthens for high-speed impacts. These so-called RHEON cells compress to absorb linear impact and shear to optimally control rotational impact energy, reducing the resulting acceleration of the head.

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