newVideoPlayer("mouth_brush_gawker.flv", 475, 376);Toothbrushes, they just need updating. Right? Well, according to yet another delusional contestant on American Inventor, a better solution would be a little nub you stick on the tip of your tongue. You then use your tongue to get your teeth clean, hoping it doesn’t come off and get lodged in your throat, giving you a really embarrassing obituary. It’s sure to turn the whole dental care industry on its head! [American Inventor]
This is Dento-Munch, a robot developed by scientists to help with research into dental products. Kazem Alemzadeh of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory is one of the engineers behind the team, at Britain’s Bristol University, and he reckons that Dento-Munch could cut down the time needed to trial new products, as machines up until now have been poor imitators of humans.
Dento-Munch’s upper and lower “jaws” consist of two platforms. The lower one is capable of moving six degrees of freedom (unlike the current lab simulators, which are only capable of 2 degrees) and can move and rotate up and down, forwards and backwards, and left and right – just like its human counterpart.
Our own Charlie White got a chance to fiddle around with that fancy UV Sonicare Flexcare toothbrush we showed you this morning, and he came away impressed. He says it runs as quiet as a mouse, which is good if you don’t want to wake up your wife with a toothbrush that sounds like a chainsaw, and it feels nice and solid in your hand. It has a few different modes, including a timed three-minute brush and a click brush. The UV sanitizer that nukes germs is available separately, just in case you don’t want to invest in a whole new brush setup.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let Charlie stick the thing in his mouth to try to clean up the Dorito crumbs and whisky breath, so I guess we’ll just need to wait till August to test their claim that it removes more plaque than any other electric toothbrush.
galleryPost('philipstoothbrush', 5, 'philipstoothbrush'); –Adam Frucci
We love our Sonicare toothbrushes. But how could you improve on a design that’s prevented any cavities since we started using it? By adding a UV sanitizer. Peter Pachal at Sci Fi has the scoop.
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We got the chance to play with Oral-B’s new Triumph electric toothbrush this afternoon. The $149 brush comes with a palm-size wireless display (it uses RF technology to communicate) that provides real-time feedback as you’re brushing so it lets you know how much time you’ve spent brushing and also what quadrant of your mouth you should be brushing.
The Triumph doesn’t have any ultrasound waves, but for all you sensitive gum types (like myself), the brush has four modes: polish, brush, clean and massage. There’s even a built-in pressure sensor that keeps you from brushing too hard. The brush comes out this September for $149. – Louis Ramirez
How would you like to have a watch that’s shaped like a tooth? No? Us neither. But Seiko’s just created a “Cavity” watch that’s both shaped like a tooth and has a gigantic hole in the middle to display the time.
The watch comes in either silver or gold, but costs only $140 (16,800 yen). The point? To remind you every day that it’s time to go to the dentist. Or eat more candy. – Jason Chen
Seiko Cavity Tooth Watch [Plastic Bamboo]
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Here’s an entrant from the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge. He’s a dentist with an Idea: a machine that cleans your teeth called the ClearSmile. It works by pumping cleansing solution around your teeth for those times when mouthwash just won’t do. Even with as awkwardly as this gadget looks to operate, we have to respect that he’s developing the (detergent?) tablets with an accredited university.
Notice his Freudian slip of “Scrubbing Bubbles”—so young, so much potential, so sued before never turning a profit. – Mark Wilson with video by Richard Blakeley
