It’s not every day that we hear about technology built to surprise, and yet ahead of IFA, that is exactly what is being offered.
If you had a toothbrush by Dyson on your bingo card this year, you are essentially a prophet, or possibly working at the English engineering company, because it is apparently real and definitely a product the company plans on releasing.
Yes, Dyson has a toothbrush, as the company takes on another aspect of home care in a decidedly different way. You’ve seen curling wands and hair dryers and hand dryers and lamps and vacuums reinvented from Dyson, and now it’s time to see what happens when that same band of researchers and designers does when they look at your teeth.
The result is the CameraJet, another gadget that will get cameras, and has seen six years of research to deliver the product being announced.
Inside, is a macro camera capable of capturing 100,000 pixels per picture at 28 images per second, snapping shots of your teeth to analyse the gaps in teeth in real time, and firing a jet of water as you brush.
It’s a little like a toothbrush and a flossing system all in one, essentially using the combination of brush and water flossing to prevent plaque, the company says. Essentially, you’ll be capturing your teeth at 0.1 megapixels, and using that to inform the system to clean your teeth.
To do this, there is actually a little bit of AI inside, albeit not in your teeth. The brush’s camera uses a machine learning to identify and track gaps, and was trained on 470,000 dental images collected during the six year development of the brush.
Even that water jet is different, with Dyson using a cone-shaped jet (conical) to spray the water over a wider area, made to be lower pressure than say firing a stream of water at your gums.
If you think brushing and flossing is all the Dyson toothbrush does, think again. The CameraJet brush also has a small 12.5ml mouthwash tank to dispense rinse in your mouth so you don’t need to do it separately.
And if that sounds like a bit of a #firstworldproblem, that tank uses a small pump and pressure chamber to allow the mouthwash to come out even when the brush is angled upright, horizontal, or at an angle.
Every aspect of the CameraJet toothbrush appears considered, from the oscillation approach of the brush to the style of the brush head, all the way to the charging dock that can refill the toothbrush and keep it charged, both at home and on the go.
It is a genuinely different take on a toothbrush, though given what we’ve seen from Dyson’s gear in the past, somewhat unsurprising in just how complicated the concept manages to be.
Despite that, you will simply just brush as you normally would, letting the CameraJet do its thing and hopefully cut back on plaque.
It’s distinct from the AI toothbrushes we’ve seen in the past that tell you how to brush. Rather, this assumes you know that already, and even lacks the screen. The CameraJet is more about brushing properly, and cleaning throughout rather than with multiple sessions.
“Flossing is an awkward and time-consuming chore. Few of us do it even though we know we should. Dyson engineers and scientists have spent well over a decade understanding oral care regimes and how nasties build up in the mouth,” said James Dyson, Founder and Chief Engineer at Dyson.
“Our research has shown that people consistently miss the areas where plaque forms: the gaps between teeth. We wanted to solve three fundamental problems: how to see those gaps, remove plaque, how to improve cleaning performance while brushing,” he said.
“By combining a camera, machine learning, precision fluid dynamics, advanced brushing technologies, connectivity and WiFi, Dyson CameraJet introduces an entirely new way to keep your mouth healthy.”
Wireless internet via WiFi plays a part because you can actually see your dental images through your phone as you clean. The images will remain private to you, and may be the sort of nightmare fuel to educate your kids on the importance of brushing, but it also may encourage you at the same time.
Given the camera is basically an endoscope, it could be like having a dental camera in your home.
One thing it won’t be is cheap, with the Dyson Dental System and CameraJet toothbrush set for release in Australia for $799 this week. Granted, you will get some Dyson toothpaste and mouth-rinse included, though you can probably use whatever you want when that runs out, or even before it.
At a hair under $800, the Dyson CameraJet may well be the most expensive toothbrush we’ve seen yet, and could stay that way. These gadgets typically max out at $400, and those are pretty advanced models, too.
Dyson’s, however, is in a totally different place, and teeth may never be the same again.
