During practices, American football coaches typically stay on the sidelines, grim-faced, as they order their players through drills. But during an afternoon this past May, in the cavernous training facility for the Pittsburgh Steelers, head coach Mike Tomlin couldn’t resist getting in on the action. As a human-size robot sped over the artificial turf, the grinning coach ran onto the field and tackled it.
The MVP, or Mobile Virtual Player, was designed to take precisely this kind of hit—the sort of jarring blow that, inflicted repeatedly, can injure the brains of human players.
via IEEE Spectrum
Image: Nathaniel Welch
