How Next-Gen Robots Are Helping Sports Players Train Better?

Robot technology is evolving and entering in all spheres of our life’s. From Robo vacuums to self-driving Tesla car, we can fairly view what the future holds in store for us.  But one area where the robots are already playing a substantial impact is Sports. The robot technology has long been used in cricket, helping batsmen practice better. And slowly these robots have crept into other sports as well.

In this post, we’ll take a look at how robots are helping athletes in various sports to train better and improve.

1)    Cricket

The second most popular sport in the world is experiencing a major disruption as to how players train. With the introduction of Ball throwing robots, now batsmen can practice-wide variety of bowling all day long. These robots can imitate bowling of different bowlers, helping the batsmen work on their weakness and actually get better at it. While the balling machines were already available but now they are getting smarter. The machine can study the weakness of the batsmen by analyzing his/her previous dismissals and bowl along those lines. Not only this, some of the top-of-the-line robots can even examine the shots played and give a rating based on that.

Finding a bowler who balls at you for net practice is always tricky. But with a bowling machine, you get a personal training partner who never gets tired. Indeed, a groundbreaking innovation.

Some of the popular cricket balling machines are Bola Professional, Paceman and heater.

2)    Tennis

Next up is another popular sport – Lawn Tennis. I’m pretty sure you would have seen the match between Federer and Nadal in the French Open final (which unfortunately Federer lost). Being a two player sport, you need a partner to practice. But what if you don’t have a partner to practice with or what if your partner is not of the same skill level as you?

Well, a tennis ball machine is an answer. This revolutionary machine can help you practice-wide a variety of strokes from baseline shots to lob and more. These robots are highly programmable and can adapt to your playing style and training requirements. All you need is to feed in the balls, set the ball parameters, and get going with the practice.

Top tennis ball machines are SpinShot, Lobster and Match Mate.

3)    Table Tennis

You may wonder why table tennis is on this list – is it even a real sport? Sorry to break your thunder, it is genuinely a real sport in all sense. Table Tennis is one of the fastest indoor sport in which balls can shoot at you at a speed of 100 mph. The game of quick reflex and hand-eye coordination requires a grueling number of practice hours. And getting a partner who can help you practice is quite a luxury and even more if they are available for training at your convenient time.

This is where a Table Tennis Robot comes in place. This disruptive robot can emulate human-like strokes and help players practice and improve their game. The robots can be programmed to vary the speed, placement, and spin, thus helping the players practice almost all types of strokes and work on their weaknesses. The best part is that these robots are not that costly. You can get a fairly advance ping pong robot for under $1000.

Some of the popular robots are Butterfly Amicus, Newgy Robo-Pong, and Tennirobo.

4)    Baseball

The most famous American sport where teams like New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, etc have a religious following is also going through the disruption as to how players train. Coaches and players have been actively training on the Ball pitching machines, letting them practice various types of ball throw from fast to swinging ball pitches.

Every player has a weak point, and programming these Ball pitching machines to throw at your weak points, can help players improve in their game.

Popular ball pitching machines are Jugs Bp2, first pitch and heater sports.

Conclusion

Robots can significantly help players train better and there is no iota of doubt about it. However, it these robots should be used along with their human counterparts. Purely relying on the robots, may turn actually detrimental and impact the sport negatively.

You see, we’re human because we can adapt better and think of new ideas but robots can’t. While robots can only learn what we want them to learn (at least for now) and thus they’re still one step behind on how we think. But where robot scores over human counterpart is that they never get tired and this makes them an indispensable resource for any serious player or coach.

And at the end of the day, just remember a robot is as good as the player who uses it. You have the best robot in the world, but if you’re not using to best of your potential then it may very well be worthless.