Science and Health

Teams vie for 'Avatar' advantage

By James Glanz and Alan Schwarz (New York Times)
Updated: 2010-10-24 08:37

In the endless quest for athletic advantage, a handful of American major league baseball teams are engaged in an elaborate, largely clandestine race to master an advanced imaging technology that some think could influence the way athletes of all ages train, perform and recover from injuries.

The technology is an unlikely hybrid. It combines the technology that captures the human gestures at the core of three-dimensional animations like "Avatar" with advanced sensors, biomechanics and orthopedic research on the most powerful and least damaging ways to hurl a ball, swing a bat or simply run like the wind.

Essentially, the technique produces a full, three-dimensional representation on a computer that can be viewed from any direction, run forward and backward, and analyzed to calculate precise limb angles and accelerations, stresses on joints, ball speeds and the G-forces that produce them.

The technique, called motion capture, has become a recognized tool for helping athletes and nonathletes recover from injuries, said Chris Bregler, an associate professor of computer science and director of the Movement Lab at New York University.

"It's just a matter of time before it goes into not just sports medicine but making a team better," Dr. Bregler said.

In one permutation, a company found a way to create the illusion that a football player was immersed in an EA Sports Madden-style three-dimensional video game. This allows an athlete to train against life-size animations whose movements are based on statistics of specific opponents. The real player �?while wearing 3-D goggles �?runs, feints and throws as the EA Madden characters chase him.

Researchers have also used similar technology to create and transmit life-size images of dancers, allowing people in two locations to practice dancing together.

A version of the technique called tele-immersion has also been used for a kind of ''distance coaching,'' in which a coach in one location can watch a team perform drills in three dimensions in another location.

Operating largely in secrecy, a few baseball teams have begun using the technology on a large scale with the hope of avoiding injuries, adjusting pitchers' motions and batters' swings, and even helping players in slumps.

At least three teams �?the Boston Red Sox, the San Francisco Giants and the Milwaukee Brewers �?are recording dozens of players, according to trainers, doctors and technicians familiar with the work.

In football, the Green Bay Packers, in Wisconsin, tested an early version of the system, according to officials with a company involved in developing the technology, and a motion capture laboratory was recently built on the campus of the New England Patriots in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

Inside the cavernous laboratory, Phil McCarthy, a lanky young amateur pitcher from Old Dominion University in Virginia, went methodically through his workout, throwing fastballs, change-ups, curveballs and a dipping split-finger pitch.

About 75 small white globes were stuck to his body as if he had contracted some alien disease. Above him was a ring of 20 high-speed cameras, each glowing an eerie scarlet, capturing images of the reflective globes with an infrared strobe.

The disembodied cloud of globes appeared on a large video screen, and then �?flash! �?a computer program connected the dots, and a sketchy but biomechanically exact twin of Mr. McCarthy appeared on screen. His windup and pitch had been captured in three dimensions, with enough detail to calculate the stress on his wrist and the angular velocity of his shoulders.

Some sports insiders predict that once the programs become more widely known, they could set off a technology race and give younger, technically savvy coaches a new edge over traditionalists.

Bill Schlough, the chief information officer for the San Francisco Giants, declined to let reporters see his team's system or even confirm its location, but he said: "There are some coaches that see it as some sort of hocus-pocus. Are there going to be a lot of coaches like that left in 20 years? I doubt it."

He added: "It's not the holy grail. It's another tool in our arsenal to improve performance."

The New York Times

(China Daily 10/24/2010 page11)