Techotic

I don’t have any kids yet, but from my experience of being a kid trapped in an adult body, i can understand the two major problems that most parents are facing when they’re trying to teach young children to brush their teeth.

The first problem is many youngsters are unwilling to brush their teeth in the first place. The second problem is most children often lack the skill to brush their teeth effectively. Luckily for you parents out there, Hao-hua Chu and his team at the National Taiwan University have come up with a brilliant “learning through play” approach to persuade children into brushing regularly.

They came up with an idea to turn a toothbrush into a simple version of a Nintendo Wii remote and allow your kids to play a simple brushing game on the computer whilst brushing their teeth. By adding a simple box-shaped extension with a unique pattern of three LEDs on each face to the end of a normal toothbrush. These LEDs that can be tracked using a web cam mounted on the wall and it can then track brush movements in three dimensions and feed this information into a computer nearby. These information are to be used for a simple game installed in the computer which Hao Chu and his team developed.

Basically, the game consists of a set of colorful teeth which become white when virtual dirts are scrubbed off. By making brushing teeth fun and interactive, the children were twice as effective at brushing their own teeth according to the research made by Chu’s team on a class of 13 kindergarten children.

Now the researchers are hoping to make this fun game for older children and adults as well. I like the idea, but I think it’ll take up too much space in the bathroom.

[via new scientist]