TECHNOLOGY
Taekwondo
To help GB Taekwondo, BAE imple- mented techniques used to develop military tanks. Engineers from the company’s Advanced Technology Centre in Bristol helped evaluate the electronic scoring vest used in major international competitions. The vests are based on fighters wearing special electronic socks that deliver a coded signal when they strike sensors on the op- ponent’s vest. As the vests were introduced just a few years ago, the sport had never fully under- stood how to optimise tactics. To tackle this, BAE spent more than six months testing the vest using sophisticated equipment usually used to test composite materials’ resistance to impact. As a result of BAE’s work, Team
GB members have adjusted their training and competition tactics to reflect the different forces needed to successfully hit certain parts of the vest – maximising the methods needed to score on the vest.
for a velodrome – or we explore a sport’s requirements and identify how our facili- ties can offer solutions to meet them. An example of the latter could be our work with simulators to find out how we can use them to train Taekwondo athletes. “Fighter pilots use simulators to help
them prepare for a number of scenarios – to understand what’s just happened, what’s happening now and what’s about to happen. Once they get an anticipation of what’s about to happen, we think they’re at their performance best. So we’re looking into how we can give athletes the opportunity to use sim- ulators to get into the same mental state before a bout – to be prepared for every scenario by providing them with a simu- lation of their toughest opponents and practice against them over and again.”
MUTUAL BENEFITS Listening to Davies describe the com- pany’s impressive facilities and the opportunities they offer, it’s clear to see how athletes and national governing bodies can benefit from the partnership – but what does BAE get from it? “Our intention has never been to develop a
The BAE team has helped GB Taekwondo understand the inner workings of the competition vest
commercial stream involved in sports manufacturing,” Davies says. “Rather, we’ve set three objectives we look to achieve. These are to showcase our ca- pability and technology as a company; to inspire young people to consider en- gineering as an exciting career; and to inspire and energise our engineers.” He adds that due to the three targets,
the success of the partnership – at least for BAE – isn’t measured in the number of medals achieved. “The glory of the medals is part of the message, but re- ally what we’re looking to do is promote engineering internally and externally. “ He admits, however, that measuring
the success of the objectives can be hard. “That is one of the frustrations – it being difficult to put a figure on it. We might have inspired 10 or 20 youngsters to take up engineering – but we might just as well have inspired 100 or even 1,000. I guess we just don’t know.” As for inspiring and energising
existing BAE staff by placing them on sports projects, Davies says the ideal team working on a UK Sport taskforce would include young engineers, fresh in their careers, being supervised and
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mentored by a more experienced en- gineer – all while delivering something phenomenally useful to a sport.
FUTURE PLANS Since 2008, BAE’s investment in the partnership has exceeded £1.5m. The new, three-year deal until Rio 2016 will see a further £800,000 being spent on sports innovation. Looking ahead, Davies remains secretive about current projects for Sochi and Rio. “We’re still in the very early days of the new partnership, so it’s very much ‘watch this space’ for the Rio projects. For Sochi I don’t really want to say too much, as we’re late in that cycle, so a lot of the technology has already been delivered for the Games next year.” One future plan Davies doesn’t hide
though, is that he can see no reason why the partnership with UK Sport shouldn’t reach way beyond Rio. “In the commercial climate things are always bounded in time, of course, so we agreed the partnership until 2016,” he says. “But I’d hope it would go on well after there.” A sentiment shared, we’re sure, by winning Team GB athletes up and down the country.
Issue 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
CASE STUDY
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