- Swim and view (Image: Zac MacAulay/Plainpicture)
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NOT feeling your front crawl? Breaststroke a little off-kilter? Not to worry, a robotic swimming buddy can help you out.
Swimoid is a robot that glides along the pool floor underneath you as you swim, monitoring your form and providing real-time feedback on a 50-centimetre LCD screen.
Two cameras, one built into the front and one at the back of the robot, capture images of your stroke from below. A poolside coach can view these images on the screen and draw instructional diagrams over them for the swimmer to see as they swim – much like a football pundit does on television.
Yu Ukai from the University of Tokyo, Japan, says he built the system after experiencing the difficulties of teaching swimming from the side of the pool when he worked as an elementary school swimming instructor.
The robot was presented last week at the Augmented Human International Conference in Stuttgart, Germany.
Ukai says Swimoid could also be used to entertain young swimmers as they perform laps, and he has even developed a game on the robot to help introduce new swimmers to water. He also plans to remodel Swimoid as a scuba-diving buddy, adapting the robot to operate in open water.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Robo swim buddy snaps your stroke from below"