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Video Game Encourages Kids to Brush Their Teeth

by Peter Mychalcewycz on April 8, 2008 at 08:02 AM


Dental hygiene is crucial to a child's development. Unfortunately, it sounds like a scary African scavenger and is absolutely no fun. Thankfully, researchers at the National Taiwan University have devised a truly fun way to protect your children's chompers.

This is how their contraption works:

First, an LED module loaded with three LED's is mounted on the end of the toothbrush handle. The module is tracked by a Web camera that has been mounted on top of whatever mirror your child brushes in front of. The camera uses software to track the movements of the toothbrush and syncs them up with a cartoon version -- displayed on an LCD screen -- -- of teeth being scrubbed clean.

So, the "game" isn't really that hard or even much of a game at all, but studies showed that kids using the system brushed twice as well as those without it.


From Engadget


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Tags: dental tech, DentalTech, home tech, HomeTech, weird

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