ROBOT OF THE WEEK: UNDERWATER SWIM BUDDY
by Hazed
Teaching someone to swim isn’t easy. Well, not once they have mastered the basics of keeping afloat and moving through the water, anyway. When it comes to improving a swimmer’s technique, instructors are hampered by the fact that they can’t really see what’s going on from the side of the pool.
Now those that want to improve their stroke have mechanical help, in the form of a swimming robot. Swimoid glides along the floor of the pool underneath the swimmer, monitoring their form using two cameras. It provides feedback on a 50-centre LCD screen.
Meanwhile the film of your stroke, taken from below, can be viewed poolside and the coach can even draw instructional diagrams which the swimmers can see while they swim.
The robot has been built by Yu Ukai from the University of Tokyo, Japan. He had problems teaching swimming from the side of the pool when he worked as a swimming instructor in an elementary school.
Ukai has plans to developed Swimoid so it works in open water and can become a scuba-diving buddy.
