Robots are often breaking through to do jobs that were once done by humans. But it’s usually not because people are prohibited from doing the job.
“Back in 2010, the head football coach at Dartmouth College decided to completely eliminate throwing for practice,” Ryan McManus, director of sales and marketing at Vermont-based MVP Robotics, told Digital Trends. “It was relatively controversial at the time, because it’s a pretty important skill to practise, especially at the Division 1 level. They were trying to come up with a safer way to simulate game scenarios, but nobody knew exactly how to do it.”
The obvious substitute for human bodies was stationary soft foam pads, which can greatly reduce the number of scrapes, lacerations and — perhaps most importantly — concussions that can occur in practice. But pads aren’t the most realistic stand-ins for human players, mostly because they don’t move. The problem was given to a group of engineering students to solve.
Adam Pintar/American Football
“Nobody ever stands still in a game,” McManus continued. “There was this idea that if we could take an old traditional foam doll, which has been the same for over 100 years, and put it on a remote control car or something, that would be great.”
The group worked on the problem and came up with a prototype that was essentially a grasping pad on a moving robotic platform – a Roomba with an athletic scholarship. The prototype was not perfect. Most prototypes never are. “He had a lot of duct tape on him, it was falling apart after every procedure,” McManus recalled.
But the essential idea was there. If only someone could make a tougher, more robust version of the tackle-bot, they could have a decent job, they thought. The group decided that “someone” should be them. MVP Robotics was born.
Hit of the week
As it turns out, Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevens wasn’t the only person concerned about the dangers of concussions. Traumatic brain injuries have been an accepted part of sports like football for too long. One 2017 study, which examined the brains of deceased football players on the gridiron, found that 99% of the brains of NFL players tested, 91% of the brains of college players, 64% of semi-pro players and 21% of high school football players had various stages of chronic traumatic brain injury. encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with repeated blows to the head.
The effects of CTE can range from behavioral problems to mood-related disorders. In 2017, Aaron Hernandez, a former professional football player and convicted murderer, committed suicide while serving a prison sentence. His family donated his brain to Boston University’s CTE Center. They concluded that Hernandez had stage 3 CTE, which researchers said had never been seen in a brain under the age of 46. Hernandez committed suicide at the age of 27.
Concussions are extremely difficult to completely eliminate in physical sports — although scientific research into new types of helmets can help. But these sports can be changed to reduce the prevalence of such injuries. That’s easier said than done in an athletic event where a rousing “hit of the week” celebration is an expected part of the action. However, there are scenarios where it can be reversed – where concussions suffered during practice are large. According to a recent study, published in JAMA Neurology, about 72% of concussions examined by researchers over five college football seasons occurred during practice. Changing this would be a literal game changer.
MVP Robotics was in the right place at the right time to help. His robotic solution – which looks a bit like a motorized inflatable float – is now used by half the teams in the NFL, more than 50 colleges and over 150 high schools. “It was pretty tough,” said McManus, whose Division 1 college football career at Dartmouth was cut short by injury, including a couple of nasty concussions.
Specifically, at Dartmouth, concussions were reduced by 58% in two years after implementing smart solutions from MVP Robotics.
Enter Sprint
The company’s newest unit, the $3,450 Sprint, weighs 160 pounds, most of which is in the base of the unit. It’s remote-controlled (although some research is being done to explore autonomous or pre-programmed routines for future iterations), can be turned on a dime, and can effectively travel across grass and lawn at speeds up to 26 miles per hour, or about the same speed that a the athlete ran on the field.
“Once you tackle it, it will pop out and right itself,” McManus said. “It also provides that resistance against another player in terms of weight, because you don’t want it to just be a blow-up balloon without any resistance. That’s not realistic, and it’s also a danger that you could go straight through it if you hit it hard. It could end up hitting the ground at higher speeds than it normally would.”
MVP Robotics
Interestingly, football is not the only place where robots find work. Some of this is found in other sports, such as rugby, but there are also some more unusual uses. Not long after launch, for example, the team was approached by an autonomous car company interested in getting their hands on some units.
“They’re using him as a pawn,” he said. “So if their car hits it, it hits the soft foam. Because you don’t want to use real people to, you know, make sure the technology works the way it does [should be.]”
Companies like MVP Robotics still have a lot of work to do when it comes to making sports like soccer as safe as possible. So far, they’ve certainly taken big steps (or, at least, big wheels) to help.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn