Slashdot Mirror
Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom (nytimes.com)
Andrew Flemming and Geoff Fowler, both 29, along with their friend and business partner, Will Hamilton, 37, were pouring their creative energies into a high-tech training device the likes of which the sporting world had never seen. They were building a better broom. From a report: Not just any broom, but one that they thought could be essential to the sport of curling, which relies on the best broom handling out there as teams strategically cajole a polished granite rock across a sheet of ice. They wound up calling it the SmartBroom, and in a sport that can come across as vaguely primordial, their piece of 21st-century gadgetry could play a role in determining who wins gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Each SmartBroom has four sensors in the broom head that relay data to a small display unit. Hamilton took one for a spin down the ice, and the data was instantaneous -- line graphs along with a slew of numbers that showed his force in pounds and his stroke rate in hertz. Hamilton also pointed to a figure that he described as his "sweeping performance index," or S.P.I., a metric that combines power and speed in one easy-to-digest figure. Patrick Janssen, a world-class curler from Canada, has consistently registered an S.P.I. in the 2,800 range. The numbers by themselves might not mean much, Flemming said, but subtle changes in technique can lead to big differences in the quality of each stroke. And now curlers have that information at their disposal. They can experiment to see which stroke works best for them.
Each SmartBroom has four sensors in the broom head that relay data to a small display unit. Hamilton took one for a spin down the ice, and the data was instantaneous -- line graphs along with a slew of numbers that showed his force in pounds and his stroke rate in hertz. Hamilton also pointed to a figure that he described as his "sweeping performance index," or S.P.I., a metric that combines power and speed in one easy-to-digest figure. Patrick Janssen, a world-class curler from Canada, has consistently registered an S.P.I. in the 2,800 range. The numbers by themselves might not mean much, Flemming said, but subtle changes in technique can lead to big differences in the quality of each stroke. And now curlers have that information at their disposal. They can experiment to see which stroke works best for them.
What is the Olympics rules on tools like this?
... I hoped for of a broom [http://www.ebay.com/bhp/harry-potter-broom?rmvSB=true] that would match the 1984 stunt [https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/jet-packs-in-flight-and-fiction/15/].
Watching them sweeping furiously is pretty funny though.
I want to see competitive vacuum cleaning in the summer games.
>> Yada yada Olympics yada yada
Is there a filter to screen out useless PR-driven articles about the Olympics?
This kind of stuff is is only a step above the Olympics commercials Coke and McDonalds crap out every two years (as if any athlete would get near those brands except to collect the check).
You get what you measure.
This index score is only relevant is it can only be achieved by skilled, proper sweeping. Otherwise you are just having people train to get a high score, not to sweep properly to win. Someone with an alternative method might score very poorly on the index but do well for rock control.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Yeah, who wants to read about people using technology to get better at what they do? We need more bitcoin articles!
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
-- Earl Warren
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Sport used to be something you played just for fun. Now only those competitors whose sponsors have the deepest pockets stand a chance. Sport should not require kids practicing 12 hours a day from age 6 to be competitive, and then in some sports be over the hill by their early 20s. Kids should be allowed to play sports for fun, not to become some short term corporate or national asset. Parents who permit or force their kids into such training regimens should be strung up for abuse. The Olympics haven't been about sport for a hundred years and this is just a another sign of that.
You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
and the team that was losing broke out the old-time straw brooms. Not because they're better in any way, but because they tend to leave debris on the ice that might mess up subsequent shots, aka 'the other team'. It was a bit controversial and the sportscasters discussed the strategy, which is how I knew what was going on. I'm guessing those old brooms have now been outlawed.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
>> Yada yada Olympics yada yada
Is there a filter to screen out useless PR-driven articles about the Olympics?
This kind of stuff is is only a step above the Olympics commercials Coke and McDonalds crap out every two years (as if any athlete would get near those brands except to collect the check).
This is literally a story about hobbyists hacking together hardware and software to make a training device now used by national teams.
I think it handily qualifies as "News for Nerds".
I stole this Sig
Make a toaster that can toast bread evenly, this current bunch of retards can't even make a toaster that toasts the whole slice from top to bottom, a 5 year old could explain what the solution to that problem is.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures. -- Earl Warren
Yes, impressive accomplishments like tossing a ball through a hoop.
(as if any athlete would get near those brands except to collect the check).
Ah the irony; Olympic grade athletes are the only people with the caloric burn rate to eat that stuff and not show it.
My ex-wife will definitely be interested in this! Wait... it's NOT for flying on? Nevermind...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Don't know about you but I find stories like this depressing. I imagine all Olympic athletes start as enthusiastic kids but to reach the top they have to become the equivalent of white mice, everything worked out for optimal performance by scientists. Sounds horrendous to be honest.