"34 seconds 32! Break the Olympic record! On the 12th, China's Gao Tingyu won the gold medal in the men's 500-meter event of speed skating at the Winter Olympics. Behind this hard-won gold medal, a set of "human high-speed catapult devices" provided strong support for the national team speed skaters to carry out curve sliding technology training.
Schematic diagram of the principle of human high-speed ejection technology
In speed skating, mastering the sliding technique at the corners is the key to success, and it is also a technical difficulty in daily training. If you want to train for sliding in curves, you need athletes to speed up to more than 60 kilometers per hour, which puts forward higher requirements for physical strength and speed consistency. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a program that helps athletes accelerate and improve the efficiency of curve technology training.
Athletes use ejection devices to train in curve techniques
"We draw on the principles of ejection technology from space launches to provide athletes with external force acceleration." Hao Jiguang, a teacher at the School of Astronautics of Beijing Institute of Technology, said that the team innovatively proposed a traction acceleration scheme, and the athletes could grasp the traction rope to complete the acceleration, "In the application, the athletes first input the preset speed according to the demand, and then pull the traction rope by hand, and follow the device to accelerate evenly." When the preset speed is reached, the unit indicator flashes to prompt the athlete to release the rope and enter the corner training. ”
Human body high-speed catapult device
"Safety and stability are key to R&D." Hao Jiguang said that the device adopts the technical scheme of electric acceleration, which accelerates the athletes along the gentle speed curve through the motor, so that the whole process of ejection can be controlled. In the process of "traction acceleration", athletes can release the rope at any time if they have any discomfort, which also avoids the safety hazards of "back push acceleration". In addition, the team also developed a high-speed ejection parameter system adapted to human body functions, achieving the same separation speed for athletes of different weights.
Principle design, prototype design, prototype trial production, functional and counterweight experiments, human experiments... After a series of efforts, the first device of the "Human High-Speed Catapult Device" was successfully developed in April 2019 and officially provided to the Chinese speed skating team in January 2020. "With the assistance of the device, speed skaters can reach the specified speed from the stationary state in a few seconds, and the sliding speed can reach up to 20 meters per second, saving about two-thirds of the training time for special technical actions such as skiing."
Under the traction of this "ice accelerator", the athletes adjust their posture and enter the bend in one go. The victory of the Chinese speed skating team also made Hao Jiguang deeply pleased: "In the process of research and development, we have taken many detours, but the results have proved that all the efforts are worth it!" In addition to speed skating, he said, human catapults for ski jumping have also been successfully developed, which can make ski jumpers skate away at speeds of up to 30 meters per second.