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If you were battling someone with a real sword, you’d be likely to know when you hit your target. You know, gushing blood and all that. But with a foam sword, it’s less clear.
Yes, this is a story about a wireless foam sword with an accelerometer that helps track whether a blow has hit its target, in order to keep fighters honest. The swords also have LEDs along the shaft of the blade so they look like light sabers.
The Sabertron project launched on Kickstarter this week, with basic sets of two swords promised to those who pledge about $125. It has a way to go to hit its goal of $195,000.
The target market for this is people who already play with foam swords, like live action role players, and would bring their sport/hobby into line with others like laser tag and fencing.
Asked about the market potential for the device, the Sabertron folks sent over an endorsement from an active LARPer: “Imagine impact gauges reading out info to viewers like stats to a pro football player — finding out that Ulfblood’s favorite finishing move is a two-handed downward strike to the collarbone. Imagine never having to worry about the ‘honor system,’ rhino hiders or people who fight unsafely again. This is just the very tip of the Everest-sized iceberg that this tech can lead too.”
The folks behind Sabertron are a trio of engineers in Texas who call their company LevelUp.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
