A 4.61 Virginia Tech score suggests a shift toward fully integrated helmet impact systems.
Pikio Labs
It wasn’t long ago that Canyon’s RLS-equipped Deflectr climbed to the top of Virginia Tech’s independent helmet testing rankings with a score of 6.83 (lower is better in the VT scoring system). That score edged out the POC Cularis at 7.10, and was the latest result in a trend of helmets testing progressively better, but often by modest amounts. Now, a brand-new entrant to helmets, Pikio Labs, has dropped that figure to 4.61 with its Si helmet – an unprecedented leap under Virginia Tech’s testing protocol, ranking first across all five cycling helmet categories at the time of testing.
As with any helmet testing protocol, Virginia Tech scores offer lab-controlled comparisons rather than a complete picture of real-world crash performance, but the scale of the improvement is hard to ignore.
Much like the RLS technology used on Canyon’s Deflectr, the Pikio Si uses a proprietary technology developed by Pikio Labs called Oblik, which moves the slip plane to the external surface of the helmet, rather than the internal placement of other rotational impact management platforms such as Mips.
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Who is Pikio, and what is Oblik?
Launching as a new brand, Pikio Labs (pronounced P-Q) was founded by Daniel Abram, a PhD in mechanical engineering, following more than 17 years spent in design optimisation specifically for head protection systems. The Canadian-based brand uses experimential biomimicry and structural optimisation to rethink how helmets manage impacts.
Rather than targeting a single aspect of impact behaviour, Pikio positions Oblik as a full-system approach to energy management. It was developed to better protect riders from both linear and rotational impacts, based on research into real-world impact mechanics. Instead of relying on a single liner or a low-friction slip layer, Oblik employs a mechanically decoupled structure of “independently mounted modules” connected via flexible nodes.
This essentially means the outer shell can move independently of the inner, as well as the different sections of the inner being able to move independently of each other. The result is a design that Pikio says allows the helmet to respond differently depending on the direction and severity of an impact. Since most real-world crashes involve a combination of linear and rotational forces, managing both effectively is a key factor in a given helmet’s performance.
Pikio is not the first to incorporate slip-plane technology inside the helmet structure; Mips’ Spherical incorporates the company’s slip-plane technology between two concentric foam shells, while 6D’s Omni-Directional Suspension (ODS) uses a foam liner suspended in a foam-and-shell outer via dampers that both compress and move in a 360° range of motion. What makes Pikio’s technology different is how the rib-like inner shell elements are individually attached to the shell via the nodes, so that each rib can move independent of the shell and each other.
In a press release for the Si, Abram said, “Conventional helmets generally rely on a single foam liner designed to crush under load. Some designs incorporate a low-friction slip layer intended to help reduce rotational forces,” the CEO and founder went on to say, “While these approaches are effective to a degree, they are inherently constrained by the internal geometry of the helmet, which can limit how linear and rotational forces are managed during oblique impacts. We developed Oblik to allow the helmet structure itself to respond more adaptively to oblique impacts.”
Despite that added complexity, claimed weights sit at 255 g to 298 g depending on size, placing it broadly in line with premium road helmets.
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