
Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom - montrose
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/sports/olympics/curling-smart-broom.html?hpw&rref=sports&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
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croon
> Each SmartBroom has four sensors in the broom head that relay data to a
> small display unit. Hamilton took one for a spin down the ice, and the data
> was instantaneous — line graphs along with a slew of numbers that showed his
> force in pounds and his stroke rate in hertz. Hamilton also pointed to a
> figure that he described as his “sweeping performance index,” or S.P.I., a
> metric that combines power and speed in one easy-to-digest figure.

Is there an obvious true way to reach that SPI metric? Is it possible that
optimizing for the broom-provided SPI gives you non-optimized performance? I
would assume that you would need temperature measurements from the ground/ice
since the article implies that's the function of sweeping:

> A quick primer on sweeping: It is important. The science behind it is much
> more complicated than people think. The simplified version is that sweeping
> slightly increases the temperature of the ice while creating micro-scratches
> on the surface. The result is that players are better able to control for
> distance and trajectory as the rock travels down the sheet. The sport hinges
> on precision, so every brush stroke counts.

Am I missing something?

~~~
fredophile
I would guess that maximizing the number would not always provide optimal
results. I don't curl but if you ever watch curling you can see that they
aren't always trying to provide full force all of the time. I'm sure that
having a quantifiable number that gives an indication of how hard they're
sweeping at any given point could be useful.

~~~
jandrese
Yeah, it's all about fine tuning the speed of the rock so it lands exactly
where you want it to go. Curling is basically shuffleboard but you can adjust
the slipperiness of the track while the rock is in motion. If the rock is
already slowing down at the right rate (or not enough!) you definitely don't
want to be sweeping.

I do wonder where the sport originated. Ice shuffleboard is straightforward
enough, but who was the genius that figured out you could sweep the ice to
control the rock better. Why were there no killjoys yelling that it was
cheating? How can this be an Olympic sport but dart throwing isn't?

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maaaats
I thought this would be about the ban a few years ago: Brooms with certain
bristles were banned, as it made it "too easy".

From the same paper a few years back:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-
iss...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/sports/facing-control-issues-
curling-draws-line-at-high-tech-brooms.html)

~~~
stan_rogers
Hey, some of us are still fuming about brushes. The couple of days after a
bonspiel used to _hurt_.

~~~
irremediable
What did people use before brushes?

(I love that the user complaining about curling minutiae has the username
"stan_rogers", by the way. Possibly the most Canadian thing ever.)

~~~
stan_rogers
Proper brooms, as opposed to push brooms. You might occasionally see a skip
using one just to call shots these days. It took a _lot_ of effort to sweep
effectively with a corn broom.

(I can sing all of his stuff as a party piece, but I had the name a long time
before he became famous, and Stan is a really common name in my family going
back many generations. Probably related if you go all Mormon on the genealogy,
but that's more effort than fun.)

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overlordalex
I'm interested to see how the curling federation handles this - the last I
heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided too much
of an advantage. I can see this being an invaluable training tool, but
ultimately banned in competition

~~~
lawlessone
> last I heard they banned brooms with directional bristles as they provided
> too much of an advantage.

Odd, could they not just give everyone brooms with directional bristles? then
it would no longer be an advantage.

~~~
jdietrich
The new brooms fundamentally changed the nature of the game, greatly
diminishing the importance of the skill of the thrower and the strength and
athleticism of the sweepers.

The cat is now out of the bag. The techniques learned from using directional
brooms have now created a completely different style of sweeping, based mainly
on manipulating scratches in the ice rather than heating it. Directional
fabric broom heads are banned, but the directional sweeping technique they
spawned is here to stay. Not everyone in curling is happy about that.

[http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/curling/curling-s-broom-
co...](http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/curling/curling-s-broom-controversy-
can-t-be-swept-aside-1.3448870)

~~~
IntronExon
If a sport or activity can be undermined by learning more about it, maybe it’s
not much of a sport.

~~~
jdietrich
All games are played by an arbitrary set of rules designed to encourage a
particular kind of competition. New equipment, new tactics or simply
increasing skill levels may undermine critical aspects of the balance or
challenge of those games. Practically all sports have tweaked their rules over
time to ensure that the game remains fair, challenging and enjoyable to watch.

In the early 1950s, the NBA had a serious problem with boring, low-scoring
games. Once teams had achieved a lead, they tended to run out the clock by
passing the ball between each other and playing very defensively. In 1954,
they introduced the shot clock, which effectively prohibited these stalling
tactics and was widely credited with saving the game as a spectator sport.

Golf has regularly changed the rules to preserve the integrity of traditional
courses. Better clubs, better balls and greater athleticism were making many
holes almost trivial for professional players. Rather than destroying their
heritage by abandoning iconic courses, they chose to regulate the equipment.
They haven't just banned new developments - in many cases, they prohibited
equipment that had been used in competition for many years.

In the case of curling, the directional brush heads revealed a new way of
using old equipment. Traditional bristle brush heads were thought to be
obsolete, but turn out to be extremely powerful if they are brand new, very
stiff and used in a specific way. This combination of factors may be
detrimental to the game as a whole. I think that it's entirely reasonable for
the World Curling Federation to consider a ban on certain types of bristled
brush head.

It's worth contemplating the fact that the ban on directional brush heads came
entirely from the players themselves - prior to the ban, 34 elite curling
teams signed an open letter saying that they would not use the new technology.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/top-curling-teams-
say...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/top-curling-teams-say-they-won-
t-use-high-tech-brooms-1.3274903)

~~~
lou1306
A real nice, fictional example is the one in _Quidditch through the ages_ by
Kennilw... er, JK Rowling. A whole section is devoted to _stooging_ , a tactic
to overpower the goalkeeper that was eventually banned because it made the
game too boring (not to mention dangerous for the goalies).

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eagletusk
As an Electrical Engineering student at North Dakota State University I
curled. Our team won the North Dakota State Championship. One of my friends
was training for the Korean Olympics. It appears that I overlooked the market
for brooms...

It's great to see technology being used to make athletes better even if it
means changing technique.

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stevekemp
Nice to see a small NodeMCU in the picture there - just goes to show that even
hobbyist-grade hardware can be used to solve real problems, and be
experimented with usefully.

~~~
efraim
The blue board on the perf board is an Arduino Nano, I don't see any NodeMCU.
Although that would have been nice to be able to use bluetooth.

~~~
stevekemp
You're absolutely right, and it is obvious now I look again. I must have
gotten forgetful between reading the article and commenting!

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dirktheman
The Dutch short track ice skating team did something similar with Samsung:
they developed a suit that measures the angle of the athlete and sends the
data to the trainer.

[https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-
smartsuit-t...](https://www.sammobile.com/news/samsung-created-a-smartsuit-to-
help-improve-training-for-dutch-short-trackers/)

~~~
vanderZwan
We are the only people who care so much about speed-skating - everyone in our
country knows what a clap skate[0] is, I doubt that is true anywhere else.

Makes me wonder how many hyper-specialised niches of technology like this
exist out there.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate)

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danielovichdk
Cool idea and great execution. Must also be a fairly small market for such
brooms, and competition.

~~~
Theodores
It is like selling kit that is only used in Formula 1 and no other formulas.
McLaren sell lots of telemetry kit that is mandated by the FIA, they also sell
other bits and bobs where there can only be ten buyers in F1. In all fairness
they do have sidelines for NASCAR and Formula E so it is not that niche.

Essentially these parts are not mass produced, they are tailor made from a
pattern rather than fully bespoke. A different business model with different
profit margins.

The thing is that you have to get this kit from somewhere to be in the sport,
either you make it yourself or you buy the pricey semi-customer specialist kit
from someone else in the game. So the teams such as Red Bull and Force India
buy from McLaren, they can't run the cars without the telemetry.

With the broom it also creates this situation, you can't be in the sport
without the telemetry. So the niche is a good one, like what MacLaren have, a
de-facto monopoly that does not rule out rival teams cloning their own
solution if they really want to. (In the automotive analogy Ferrari do not buy
from McLaren as much as other teams, they roll their own.)

[https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/fo...](https://www.mclaren.com/appliedtechnologies/products/list/formula-e/)

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sgillen
Looks really cool, does anyone want to speculate on how it works? They say
they have four sensors in the broom head? what do you think they are? pressure
sensors maybe? do you think they have an accelerometer in addition to these
sensors?

~~~
biot
From the article:

    
    
      > Was there a way to take a pedometer (to measure
      > stroke rate) and a miniature bathroom scale (to
      > measure force) and fuse them to a curling broom?
      >
      > “So Andrew looks at me like I’m an idiot and
      > says, ‘No, you’d use, like, four sensors and an
      > accelerometer,’ ” Hamilton recalled. 
    

Given that he wanted to measure stroke rate and force, it stands to reason
that the accelerometer handles the stroke rate and the four sensors measure
the force.

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make3
"Canadians get a discount" I wonder how much money they're passing up on for
their curlingist patriotism

~~~
nerdponx
These kinds of things tend to be labors of love anyway.

