If you’re tired of using a mere stopwatch to boost your run times, you’re in luck. That’s because PUMA has developed a small, shoebox-sized robot that literally races against athletes to help them enhance their performance.
The programmable, line-following BeatBot is equipped with an Arduino at its core, an accelerometer, nine infrared sensors, rear and front-facing GoPro cameras, LED lights on the back, as well as a digital servo that controls the Ackerman steering mechanism.
With hopes of giving runners a real visual target to beat, the bot works by counting the revolution of its wheels to track its speed and distance. The device then processes all that information to make more than 100 adjustments per second while competing against a human to ensure that it stays along its path, navigates bends and crosses the finish line at the pre-set rate.
Using that real-time tracking data, BeatBot can help long-distance runners pace themselves (even on tracks with curves), and can also help sprinters push themselves to new limits. The robot is managed through an accompanying iPhone app that enables the user set their own time and goals. These goals can include beating a personal best, racing against a friend or teammates’s times, or seeing if you can go toe-to-to with world record-holder Usain Bolt as it achieves speeds of up to 27.7mph ( 44.66 km/h).
BeatBot, which was created by ad agency J. Walter Thompson New York, is currently only designed for PUMA sponsored athletes.
[h/t Fast Company]