Very cool: The future has arrived - Puma unveils the BeatBot - a robotic pacer

We should let ventolin program it so that world records will be set in diamond league every year...

Cool, but it looks expensive. If it runs more than the cost of an average Garmin, then their market is limited. Runners are cheap.

jewbacca wrote:

Cool, but it looks expensive. If it runs more than the cost of an average Garmin, then their market is limited. Runners are cheap.

Coaches would buy it for their team. Obviously if it's brand new it will be expensive. The first garmins 10 years ago were like $600 and they were really crappy compared to now.

Looks dumb, I mean pacing off someone in a sprint, say for Bolt, who's a slow starter is great when off the gun the thing's already ahead of you and constrained to hit the same pains as you.

An RC car that just gets faster as it goes gives you nothing to gauge other than the fact that at point x it beats you (if so set).

I guess to me if we're comparing to garmin, this is like virtual pacer vs virtual racer (the latter is supposed to put your actual race data in so you can compete if you had a slow start in one race etc., ie useful things).

Otherwise its just a metronome.

HardLoper wrote:

The first garmins 10 years ago were like $600 and they were really crappy compared to now.

No they weren't. Not even close. The Forerunner 201 was listed for $160.70 on July 4, 2004.

I'll agree, they were really crappy compared to now.

This is already outmoded. Just program a drone to do the same job better and give you great video footage to boot. Plus you can use for other things...all for under $1500.

This gimmick won't ever see a retail release.

I've always wanted something like that...a true metronome of a pacing partner.

I'm not trying to be mean to puma, but we created almost the exact same thing in a week in my high school engineering class.

Gauging speed by those tiny tire revolutions? I really doubt that would be accurate enough to be at all useful.

wait until holoportation takes off - you will be able to do a session with anyone, anytime, even your younger self.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d59O6cfaM0

Indeed, very cool. Rojo, would you, as a track coach, use one of these if Puma offered your program one for free? Suppose it works perfectly, and you can run it on the inside of Lane 1. Do you want your runners to run perfect workouts, or to pace themselves? (Myself, I would love to have this machine if it works well.)

Q42 wrote:

Looks dumb, I mean pacing off someone in a sprint, say for Bolt, who's a slow starter is great when off the gun the thing's already ahead of you and constrained to hit the same pains as you.

An RC car that just gets faster as it goes gives you nothing to gauge other than the fact that at point x it beats you (if so set).

I guess to me if we're comparing to garmin, this is like virtual pacer vs virtual racer (the latter is supposed to put your actual race data in so you can compete if you had a slow start in one race etc., ie useful things).

Otherwise its just a metronome.

Personally I'd love one for my sprint training, get it set up in repeat 150s and I dont have to bother with hand timing myself to see what I ran

That's a chaser, not a pacer. It gets left in the blocks every time.

Cffgggg wrote:

I'm not trying to be mean to puma, but we created almost the exact same thing in a week in my high school engineering class.

Exactly. It's just an RC race truck with some basic robotic gear on it. Any reasonably good HS robotics team, or anyone with enough knowledge of computers really, could do it for under $500.

For where the tech of drones is at today, this device seems incredibly antiquated.. ?!

fmr hs robotics wrote:

Cffgggg wrote:

I'm not trying to be mean to puma, but we created almost the exact same thing in a week in my high school engineering class.

Exactly. It's just an RC race truck with some basic robotic gear on it. Any reasonably good HS robotics team, or anyone with enough knowledge of computers really, could do it for under $500.

This.

Google "line follower robot" and find these things can be programmed with JavaScript.

Reliability on site is something I'd be scared of though (working in software support). ;)

fmr hs robotics wrote:

Cffgggg wrote:

I'm not trying to be mean to puma, but we created almost the exact same thing in a week in my high school engineering class.

Exactly. It's just an RC race truck with some basic robotic gear on it. Any reasonably good HS robotics team, or anyone with enough knowledge of computers really, could do it for under $500.

LOL. You don't know much about industrial strength.

Pro track had pace lights on the track decades ago

I've been working on a pacer like this since the fall of 2013 (off and on, much steadier in the last year). Faster and, based on the video, much more accurate than the BeatBox. The car I'm using is capable is 70+ mph so it's plenty fast enough for someone like Usain Bolt, just working on getting faster laps. Down to almost a sub-60 lap in the latest testing.

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