MouthIO: MIT and Aarhus 3D-print a sensor-packed dental brace users design themselves

Hands-free computing usually means voice assistants, but researchers at MIT CSAIL and Aarhus University picked a stranger spot: inside the mouth. MouthIO is a clear dental brace users can design themselves and 3D-print in dental resin, with sensors and actuators built into a small PCB housing on the side.

The workflow is a DIY pipeline. Users scan a physical tooth impression with a phone app, upload it to Blender, and use the researchers' plugin to shape a brace that fits their teeth. A standard version covers the teeth; an open-bite version exposes the tips so wearers do not lisp. Electronics are then soldered on: accelerometers, temperature sensors, tongue-touch pads, vibration motors and LEDs.

The result is a wearable that can do very different jobs depending on how it is configured. In experiments, an accelerometer tracked bruxism (teeth grinding); touchpads let users scroll a webpage by tapping their tongue; a temperature sensor made the brace vibrate when a drink exceeded 65 °C, an alert aimed at people with mouth numbness.

Making it cost about $15 and two hours per device, and users preferred the open-bite version in a study. The team frames MouthIO as an open-source device, and is prototyping single-sided and wirelessly charging variants — a first step, not a finished product.