5 ms·

Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom

130 points by montrose 9y ago

eagletusk 9y ago
As an Electrical Engineering student at North Dakota State University I curled. Our team won the North Dakota State Championship. One of my friends was training for the Korean Olympics. It appears that I overlooked the market for brooms... It's great to see technology being used to make athletes better even if it means changing technique.
make3 9y ago
"Canadians get a discount" I wonder how much money they're passing up on for their curlingist patriotism
- nerdponx 9y ago
  These kinds of things tend to be labors of love anyway.
danielovichdk 9y ago
Cool idea and great execution. Must also be a fairly small market for such brooms, and competition.
- Theodores 9y ago
  It is like selling kit that is only used in Formula 1 and no other formulas. McLaren sell lots of telemetry kit that is mandated by the FIA, they also sell other bits and bobs where there can only be ten buyers in F1. In all fairness they do have sidelines for NASCAR and Formula E so it is not that niche. Essentially these parts are not mass produced, they are tailor made from a pattern rather than fully bespoke. A different business model with different profit margins. The thing is that you have to get this kit from somewhere to be in the sport, either you make it yourself or you buy the pricey semi-customer specialist kit from someone else in the game. So the teams such as Red Bull and Force India buy from McLaren, they can't run the cars without the telemetry. With the broom it also creates this situation, you can't be in the sport without the telemetry. So the niche is a good one, like what MacLaren have, a de-facto monopoly that does not rule out rival teams cloning their own solution if they really want to. (In the automotive analogy Ferrari do not buy from McLaren as much as other teams, they roll their own.) https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/formula-e/ https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/fo...
sgillen 9y ago
Looks really cool, does anyone want to speculate on how it works? They say they have four sensors in the broom head? what do you think they are? pressure sensors maybe? do you think they have an accelerometer in addition to these sensors?
- taneq 9y ago
  I'd imagine that (like the bathroom scale that they referenced, even if they're using different hardware) they have four 3-axis force sensors which connect the sweeping head to the broom, letting them calculate the forces while allowing for different angles.
- biot 9y ago
  From the article: > Was there a way to take a pedometer (to measure > stroke rate) and a miniature bathroom scale (to > measure force) and fuse them to a curling broom? > > “So Andrew looks at me like I’m an idiot and > says, ‘No, you’d use, like, four sensors and an > accelerometer,’ ” Hamilton recalled. Given that he wanted to measure stroke rate and force, it stands to reason that the accelerometer handles the stroke rate and the four sensors measure the force.
- catbird 9y ago
  I think it was a mistranscription, and should read as "force sensors" (a.k.a. load cells) rather than "four sensors."
overlordalex 9y ago
I'm interested to see how the curling federation handles this - the last I heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided too much of an advantage. I can see this being an invaluable training tool, but ultimately banned in competition
- thinkloop 9y ago
  From my reading it is only meant as a training tool.
  - masklinn 9y ago
    That is also my understanding. In fact the end of the article states they'd like to get the > hardware light enough to embed in brooms used in competition so that real-time statistics can be broadcast on television. but currently it's solely a training tool.
    - jonwachob91 9y ago
      Using those sensors in competition wouldn't alter the skill/athleticism required of the athletes like the directional bristle broom. It would simply increase the amount of data that broadcasters / journalists have to work with, increasing the visibility of the sport.
      - masklinn 9y ago
        Yes.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  > last I heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided too much of an advantage. Odd, could they not just give everyone brooms with directional bristles? then it would no longer be an advantage.
  - evgen 9y ago
stevekemp 9y ago
Nice to see a small NodeMCU in the picture there - just goes to show that even hobbyist-grade hardware can be used to solve real problems, and be experimented with usefully.
- efraim 9y ago
  The blue board on the perf board is an Arduino Nano, I don't see any NodeMCU. Although that would have been nice to be able to use bluetooth.
  - stevekemp 9y ago
    You're absolutely right, and it is obvious now I look again. I must have gotten forgetful between reading the article and commenting!
dirktheman 9y ago
The Dutch short track ice skating team did something similar with Samsung: they developed a suit that measures the angle of the athlete and sends the data to the trainer. https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-smartsuit-to-help-improve-training-for-dutch-short-trackers/ https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-smartsuit-t...
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  We are the only people who care so much about speed-skating - everyone in our country knows what a clap skate[0] is, I doubt that is true anywhere else. Makes me wonder how many hyper-specialised niches of technology like this exist out there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate
maaaats 9y ago
I thought this would be about the ban a few years ago: Brooms with certain bristles were banned, as it made it "too easy". From the same paper a few years back: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-issues-curling-draws-line-at-high-tech-brooms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-iss...
- stan_rogers 9y ago
  Hey, some of us are still fuming about brushes. The couple of days after a bonspiel used to hurt.
  - irremediable 9y ago
    What did people use before brushes? (I love that the user complaining about curling minutiae has the username "stan_rogers", by the way. Possibly the most Canadian thing ever.)
    - stan_rogers 9y ago
      Proper brooms, as opposed to push brooms. You might occasionally see a skip using one just to call shots these days. It took a lot of effort to sweep effectively with a corn broom. (I can sing all of his stuff as a party piece, but I had the name a long time before he became famous, and Stan is a really common name in my family going back many generations. Probably related if you go all Mormon on the genealogy, but that's more effort than fun.)
croon 9y ago
> 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. Is there an obvious true way to reach that SPI metric? Is it possible that optimizing for the broom-provided SPI gives you non-optimized performance? I would assume that you would need temperature measurements from the ground/ice since the article implies that's the function of sweeping: > A quick primer on sweeping: It is important. The science behind it is much more complicated than people think. The simplified version is that sweeping slightly increases the temperature of the ice while creating micro-scratches on the surface. The result is that players are better able to control for distance and trajectory as the rock travels down the sheet. The sport hinges on precision, so every brush stroke counts. Am I missing something?
- jrauser 9y ago
  You could gather empirical data in controlled settings and make a model that relates the things you can measure easily (speed and downward force) to the things you care about (rock distance and control). I don't know for certain, but I'd guess that's what's been done here.
- fredophile 9y ago
  I would guess that maximizing the number would not always provide optimal results. I don't curl but if you ever watch curling you can see that they aren't always trying to provide full force all of the time. I'm sure that having a quantifiable number that gives an indication of how hard they're sweeping at any given point could be useful.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Yeah, it's all about fine tuning the speed of the rock so it lands exactly where you want it to go. Curling is basically shuffleboard but you can adjust the slipperiness of the track while the rock is in motion. If the rock is already slowing down at the right rate (or not enough!) you definitely don't want to be sweeping. I do wonder where the sport originated. Ice shuffleboard is straightforward enough, but who was the genius that figured out you could sweep the ice to control the rock better. Why were there no killjoys yelling that it was cheating? How can this be an Olympic sport but dart throwing isn't?

130 points by montrose 9y ago

As an Electrical Engineering student at North Dakota State University I curled. Our team won the North Dakota State Championship. One of my friends was training for the Korean Olympics. It appears that I overlooked the market for brooms... It's great to see technology being used to make athletes better even if it means changing technique.

make3 9y ago

"Canadians get a discount" I wonder how much money they're passing up on for their curlingist patriotism

nerdponx 9y ago
These kinds of things tend to be labors of love anyway.

danielovichdk 9y ago

Cool idea and great execution. Must also be a fairly small market for such brooms, and competition.

Theodores 9y ago
It is like selling kit that is only used in Formula 1 and no other formulas. McLaren sell lots of telemetry kit that is mandated by the FIA, they also sell other bits and bobs where there can only be ten buyers in F1. In all fairness they do have sidelines for NASCAR and Formula E so it is not that niche. Essentially these parts are not mass produced, they are tailor made from a pattern rather than fully bespoke. A different business model with different profit margins. The thing is that you have to get this kit from somewhere to be in the sport, either you make it yourself or you buy the pricey semi-customer specialist kit from someone else in the game. So the teams such as Red Bull and Force India buy from McLaren, they can't run the cars without the telemetry. With the broom it also creates this situation, you can't be in the sport without the telemetry. So the niche is a good one, like what MacLaren have, a de-facto monopoly that does not rule out rival teams cloning their own solution if they really want to. (In the automotive analogy Ferrari do not buy from McLaren as much as other teams, they roll their own.) https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/formula-e/ https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/fo...

sgillen 9y ago

Looks really cool, does anyone want to speculate on how it works? They say they have four sensors in the broom head? what do you think they are? pressure sensors maybe? do you think they have an accelerometer in addition to these sensors?

taneq 9y ago
I'd imagine that (like the bathroom scale that they referenced, even if they're using different hardware) they have four 3-axis force sensors which connect the sweeping head to the broom, letting them calculate the forces while allowing for different angles.
biot 9y ago
From the article: > Was there a way to take a pedometer (to measure > stroke rate) and a miniature bathroom scale (to > measure force) and fuse them to a curling broom? > > “So Andrew looks at me like I’m an idiot and > says, ‘No, you’d use, like, four sensors and an > accelerometer,’ ” Hamilton recalled. Given that he wanted to measure stroke rate and force, it stands to reason that the accelerometer handles the stroke rate and the four sensors measure the force.
catbird 9y ago
I think it was a mistranscription, and should read as "force sensors" (a.k.a. load cells) rather than "four sensors."

overlordalex 9y ago

I'm interested to see how the curling federation handles this - the last I heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided too much of an advantage. I can see this being an invaluable training tool, but ultimately banned in competition

thinkloop 9y ago
From my reading it is only meant as a training tool.
- masklinn 9y ago
  That is also my understanding. In fact the end of the article states they'd like to get the > hardware light enough to embed in brooms used in competition so that real-time statistics can be broadcast on television. but currently it's solely a training tool.
  - jonwachob91 9y ago
    Using those sensors in competition wouldn't alter the skill/athleticism required of the athletes like the directional bristle broom. It would simply increase the amount of data that broadcasters / journalists have to work with, increasing the visibility of the sport.
    - masklinn 9y ago
      Yes.
lawlessone 9y ago
> last I heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided too much of an advantage. Odd, could they not just give everyone brooms with directional bristles? then it would no longer be an advantage.
- evgen 9y ago

stevekemp 9y ago

Nice to see a small NodeMCU in the picture there - just goes to show that even hobbyist-grade hardware can be used to solve real problems, and be experimented with usefully.

efraim 9y ago
The blue board on the perf board is an Arduino Nano, I don't see any NodeMCU. Although that would have been nice to be able to use bluetooth.
- stevekemp 9y ago
  You're absolutely right, and it is obvious now I look again. I must have gotten forgetful between reading the article and commenting!

dirktheman 9y ago

The Dutch short track ice skating team did something similar with Samsung: they developed a suit that measures the angle of the athlete and sends the data to the trainer. https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-smartsuit-to-help-improve-training-for-dutch-short-trackers/ https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-smartsuit-t...

vanderZwan 9y ago
We are the only people who care so much about speed-skating - everyone in our country knows what a clap skate[0] is, I doubt that is true anywhere else. Makes me wonder how many hyper-specialised niches of technology like this exist out there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate

maaaats 9y ago

I thought this would be about the ban a few years ago: Brooms with certain bristles were banned, as it made it "too easy". From the same paper a few years back: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-issues-curling-draws-line-at-high-tech-brooms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-iss...

stan_rogers 9y ago
Hey, some of us are still fuming about brushes. The couple of days after a bonspiel used to hurt.
- irremediable 9y ago
  What did people use before brushes? (I love that the user complaining about curling minutiae has the username "stan_rogers", by the way. Possibly the most Canadian thing ever.)
  - stan_rogers 9y ago
    Proper brooms, as opposed to push brooms. You might occasionally see a skip using one just to call shots these days. It took a lot of effort to sweep effectively with a corn broom. (I can sing all of his stuff as a party piece, but I had the name a long time before he became famous, and Stan is a really common name in my family going back many generations. Probably related if you go all Mormon on the genealogy, but that's more effort than fun.)

croon 9y ago

> 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. Is there an obvious true way to reach that SPI metric? Is it possible that optimizing for the broom-provided SPI gives you non-optimized performance? I would assume that you would need temperature measurements from the ground/ice since the article implies that's the function of sweeping: > A quick primer on sweeping: It is important. The science behind it is much more complicated than people think. The simplified version is that sweeping slightly increases the temperature of the ice while creating micro-scratches on the surface. The result is that players are better able to control for distance and trajectory as the rock travels down the sheet. The sport hinges on precision, so every brush stroke counts. Am I missing something?

jrauser 9y ago
You could gather empirical data in controlled settings and make a model that relates the things you can measure easily (speed and downward force) to the things you care about (rock distance and control). I don't know for certain, but I'd guess that's what's been done here.
fredophile 9y ago
I would guess that maximizing the number would not always provide optimal results. I don't curl but if you ever watch curling you can see that they aren't always trying to provide full force all of the time. I'm sure that having a quantifiable number that gives an indication of how hard they're sweeping at any given point could be useful.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Yeah, it's all about fine tuning the speed of the rock so it lands exactly where you want it to go. Curling is basically shuffleboard but you can adjust the slipperiness of the track while the rock is in motion. If the rock is already slowing down at the right rate (or not enough!) you definitely don't want to be sweeping. I do wonder where the sport originated. Ice shuffleboard is straightforward enough, but who was the genius that figured out you could sweep the ice to control the rock better. Why were there no killjoys yelling that it was cheating? How can this be an Olympic sport but dart throwing isn't?