Tom it's a pleasure to meet you. I've come kitted out in Derby attire. What have you got for me?
Okay so this afternoon we're going to do a 3D motion capture, so analysing using our Vicon Motion Capture System to analyse your pedalling techniques. You're going to do some cycling over there on the watt bike and we're going to analyse the way in which your limbs moving hopefully find out that you you've got a decent cycling technique.
Well fingers crossed I;m the next Chris Hoy. Now I've noticed those things behind me here which looks like something I've seen on TV before.
Yeah so these are just retro reflective markers so they take the infrared image from the cameras that you can see around the top of us. They'll reflect that back to the camera and we will use that on the screen to kind of map your body in three dimensions so we can measure angles, how fast your legs are moving.
Oh wow, so this is almost like video capture but instead of using a video camera you're using sensors that you can actually make.
Exactly so it's exactly the same as kind of animation films would be so things like Harry Potter have used very similar technology, we just apply that in a very different way to kind of a bit more specifically to analyse the detail in the way you move rather than to recreate characters.
So let's take a football game on a PS4.
Exactly the same.
That's how you recreate Cristiano Ronaldo.
Exactly so it'd be the same markers they would just utilise the software in a little bit, a little bit differently whereas we would use it for the specific finer details to calculate angles and be able to tell you kind of this is what's good, this is kind of what we could improve to make you better at cycling or reduce the risk of injury.
And to be clear I don't have anything like this at school.
No.
This isn't normal, is it?
This isn't normal this is kind of you'd typically only find this in sports labs or in universities really.
So this is something really special that Derby University has.
Yeah absolutely. I couldn't tell you how many there are in the country but there's there's not many Vicon motion capture systems used in this way in the country now.
Well I'm going to put these on-screen. Let's get started. Okay so all I'm going to do is try and recreate your skeleton yes so I'm going to kind of we're only going to focus on the lower body cycling's lower body so I'm going to put them feet, legs and up to your hips and then we'll recreate you on the bike okay.
Okay Tom I think I'm pretty much sensor-ed up, what's next?
Okay so let's go over to the bike now then we can do a static calibration and get you onto the bike and analyse your technique.
Let's do it.
So we've fitted that marker set to your body and that should now look like a set of legs moving around the screen as opposed to all those dots, so we know now that that marker set is is you the next step is to put you on the bike and get some pedalling done. Right Radzi what we're going to do then is analyse your pedalling technique but I want this to not be a warm-up so we're going to get you to crank it up a little bit. Okay. Okay so let's go,
Okay Kyle off we go.
Okay relax for me, brilliant.
I actually can't wait to see this. Okay so should we have another go we'll do another trial.
Okay so this is tiring by the way.
Okay so hold it steady there for me that's good.
Okay I'm relaxing.
Brilliant and that's all we really need. Perfect we can put some results up on the screen for you. So what we'll do now is we've got those kind of raw footage we'll just model that very quickly and then we can work out some angles.
So Tom I understand the data's in and have I made the next Olympic Games?
Well not quite Radzi, you're not far off. So we're looking at your left knee angle here and what we'd expect it to be is somewhere at the bottom of the pedal stroke so if I put the screen in the right place we'd expect that to be somewhere between You're actually there at 39.2 degrees so you've just squeaked into the ideal pedalling technique so Chris Hoy he needs to watch out because there could be another man after his legacy perhaps.
And in terms of my right knee how are we looking there?
Your right knee is also within the 25 to 40 so if we put it down to the bottom of the pedal stroke there we can see that that's at 35.8 degrees. So well inside so there's a little, a little bit of work to do on the left, side, the right leg not quite so good.
You know what I do have to ask is obviously you've been very kind in showing us just some of the facilities here but how impressive is this for any people that come to study here?
Yeah this is an amazing facility for us so it's kind of multi-purpose and we use it primarily for teaching, so things like strength and conditioning, biomechanics, performance analysis, all get taught in here so less lectures more kind of practical teaching space. We have something called the Human Performance Unit which is our external-facing business so we get kind of elite-level amateur athletes and we do sports science services to help them improve whether that's cycling, running, golf and then finally as a student coming to the University it's also used for Team Derby performance sport. So some of the athletes actually get to train in this space and use it to kind of improve their performance while they're with us at the uni.
So not only do the students get to learn from it for their own expertise but other students who can benefit from them get exactly the same thing.
Exactly, so our students would work as the strength and conditioning coaches for example, with the students who are playing the high-performance sport and it's kind of a really nice cyclical process where they all kind of help each other out along the way while they're here.
Tom thank you so much for your time I massively enjoyed that but as for me I think I need to have a shower.
Thanks Radzi.
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