Interview: Sophia DeVito, Radhika Saran and Cleo Pontone, James Dyson Award 2026 Medical Winners

The James Dyson Award felt like a natural fit for Rumble Rims because it celebrates design-led engineering that tackles real-world problems, with a focus on the process behind the product.

The recognition from the James Dyson Award validates our belief that we don’t have to accept problems as they stand today. Concussions in youth sports have become something we treat as routine, despite their long-term neurological impact. By bringing together interdisciplinary teams of designers, engineers, and strategists, we can challenge norms like this one and design a more usable, accessible world where technology reaches people when they need it most, not after the damage is done. 

Rumble Rims uses eye tracking to help screen athletes for potential concussion, based on research showing that neurological disruption can cause delays in eye tracking.

The athlete puts on the headset and follows a target on an iPad screen at arm’s length for around two to three minutes. The system then translates that data into clear information for the coach, helping them make a more informed decision about whether an athlete may need to be removed from play and referred for further medical assessment.

The feedback we’ve had from medical professionals and coaches has been really encouraging. Everyone we’ve spoken to has said that a tool like Rumble Rims could help them make more informed decisions in real time on the sidelines.

Coaches, in particular, have been really excited about it. They’re the ones on the field and so they feel a real responsibility for the safety of their young athletes. Giving them another layer of information to help them decide how to respond to a potential concussion can give them greater confidence in those critical moments.

That response has meant a lot to us. It’s reinforced that this is a real problem that needs addressing and has motivated us to keep developing the technology.

When we spoke to coaches and athletes, we were surprised to hear how commonly simple methods like the ‘follow the finger’ test are still used to assess a potential concussion. These can be quite subjective and rely heavily on the judgement of the person carrying out the assessment.

At the other end of the spectrum, more sophisticated eye-tracking technologies are available, but these systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars, putting them out of reach for many schools and community sports teams.

We wanted to bridge that gap by bringing a more objective and accessible screening method to the sidelines for community sports teams and schools. Rumble Rims doesn’t diagnose concussion, but it can identify signs of a potential concussion and generate a report that can be shared with a medical professional for further assessment.

Our current prototype has been built for under $350. There are some comparable products in the market which use eye-tracking to screen concussions. However, many of these require specialist equipment or a trip to hospital and are prohibitively expensive (costing around $25,000 or more). Our aim was to keep Rumble Rims affordable and accessible as we continue to develop it.

We think it solves the problem in an entirely new way, bringing objective methods to grassroots sports groups and other uses. 

Our next step is further development and clinical validation. We want to continue improving the accuracy of the technology, while making the headset more comfortable and the software as simple and intuitive as possible to use.

Winning the James Dyson Award has given us real momentum to do that. It gives us the opportunity to keep developing Rumble Rims and work towards a real-world pilot that could put it on every sideline.