The Harvard student invention went through several design iterations before becoming an infrared eye-tracking headset intended to make neurological screening more accessible.
Rumble Rims didn’t start out as a headset. Before settling on its current design, the three Harvard University students behind the invention explored several other possibilities, including helmets, mouthguards and chin rests. Each was an attempt to develop a practical way of bringing eye-tracking technology into sports environments.
The eventual design has now earned Cleo Pontone, Radhika Saran and Sophia DeVito the 2026 James Dyson Award’s Global Medical category. Their invention, a low-cost headset designed to screen for possible concussion-related neurological impairment, was selected by Sir James Dyson and comes with $40,000 to support further development.
It’s an interesting recognition for a project that brings together several different elements of product engineering. There’s the physical headset, the infrared imaging technology, the way information is presented through a mobile device, and a separate dashboard intended to follow an athlete’s recovery over time.
The current Rumble Rims prototype uses side-mounted infrared cameras and 45-degree dichroic mirrors to track eye movements.
During a two- to three-minute assessment, the system measures how an individual’s eyes follow, fixate, and move. Those measurements can provide an objective indication of possible neurological impairment, with the results translated into real-time guidance on a mobile display.
It’s a different approach from simply asking an athlete how they feel or looking for visible symptoms. The intention is to give coaches and trainers another source of information when deciding whether someone should be removed from play and referred for professional medical assessment.
The physical design is an important part of that ambition. A technology intended for use around sports fields and courts needs to be accessible outside a traditional clinical setting. The team has taken feedback from medical professionals and coaches into account while developing the device, working toward something that can be used in the environments it was created for.
Rumble Rims also has a feature that extends its purpose beyond the initial assessment. Its recovery dashboard allows athletes to undergo repeated tests, building a record that families and clinicians can use to follow progress over time.
That combination of an initial screening process and continued monitoring gives the invention a broader role than a single-use sideline assessment.
Winning the James Dyson Award is a significant step, but Rumble Rims remains a developing technology. The team plans to use its $40,000 prize to build a higher-fidelity prototype, refine the eye-movement assessment and conduct further testing with athletes, coaches, trainers and medical advisers.
The longer-term ambition is to pilot the technology with schools and youth sports programs and pursue medical device validation.
There are important considerations before that can happen. Rumble Rims is designed as a screening tool, not a diagnostic device. Its measurements are intended to inform professional medical assessment, not replace it, and the system cannot independently determine when an athlete is ready to return to play.
Still, the project offers an interesting look at how student engineering can take a familiar technology and rethink where it might be useful.
The 2026 James Dyson Award attracted 2,294 entries from 28 countries and regions, making it the largest competition year in its history. Rumble Rims was selected from that international field for its approach to an important medical challenge.
For Pontone, Saran and DeVito, the immediate task is no longer deciding what form the invention should take. They’ve arrived at a design they want to develop further. Now comes the work of testing it, refining it, and determining how well it performs in the sporting environments it was built to serve.