Smart Mouth Guards for the Monitoring of the Head Kinematics of Snipers

Trade Agreement: NAFTA / CFTA / FTAs with Peru / Colombia / Panama / Korea
Tendering Procedures: All interested suppliers may submit a bid
Competitive Procurement Strategy: Lowest/Lower Bid
Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement: No
Nature of Requirements: 

Requirement: Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC)-Valcartier wishes to acquire a total of 50 units of a commercially available smart mouth guard meeting a well-defined technical specification. In addition, DRDC wished to acquire two storage cases that can be used for storing and charging the mouth guards at the shooting range.


Background: Recently, members of the CAF sniper community have expressed concerns regarding the effects of being repeatedly exposed to recoil from long-range rifles. Specifically, there is a concern that the high rate head kinematic that snipers experience during firing of a 0.50 caliber rifle might have a cumulative negative effect on their health. In order to assess the potential risk of developing a brain injury from the repeated firing of long-range rifles, the head kinematics of Snipers during a typical firing event needs to be characterized. 
 
The Weapons Effects and Protection (WEP) section of DRDC recently undertook research work to quantify the head kinematics of snipers during the firing of a 0.50 caliber rifle. Direct measurements of head kinematics were successfully taken on two operators using prototype instrumented mouth guards developed in-house. The prototype mouth guards were custom-built for the operators based on individual teeth imprints obtained from a local dentist. The mouth guards were instrumented with a high-sensitivity 6 DOF accelerometer allowing the measurement of all 3 linear accelerations and all three rotational velocities. Indirect measurements of the head kinematics were also successfully taken from high-speed stereo-videography in order to confirm and validate the readings from the accelerometer. This pilot study allowed DRDC to confirm the applicability of the mouth guard method and to identify the technical requirements for a smart mouth guard to be capable of monitoring the head kinematics of a Sniper during the firing of long-range rifles. These technical requirements include, among other things: the sensors bandwidth, the sampling rate, the recording time and the data filtering scheme. 
 
Unfortunately, the internally developed prototype mouth guards use very expensive instrumentation that requires cabling to be routed from the operator’s mouth to a data acquisition system. It is not a suitable solution for carrying data collection at a shooting range on multiple shooters.  In order to support a larger study for which 25+ snipers will be monitored throughout an extended period of time, DRDC needs to procure an integrated commercial device that meets the identified performance requirements while being wireless and more affordable.  Also, because the identity of subjects of the future study will be known only shortly before the start of the study, it will be impossible to procure customized mouth guards for everyone. Therefore, DRDC seeks a commercial device that can be fitted by simple thermoforming of the mouth guard on the teeth of the user (Boil&bite process or equivalent).  
 
In the context of future study, DRDC envisions that the mouth guards distributed to a given unit will be stored at their main training facility. The data collection and recharging of the mouth guards will be handled locally at the training facility. Therefore, there is also a requirement for a device which would be used for storage, data download and recharging. Training facilities may not have network connectivity.


Trade Agreements: The requirement is subject to the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA).


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