This week, we received confirmation from our lessee that the Anthropomorphic Test Dummy (ATD) would be arriving on the 12th of February. While exciting news, it means that we have a hard deadline that is quickly approaching. Our remaining tasks are to create a mount for the ATD head and neck assembly, create a mount for our radar gun, to figure out how to implement our DAS (data acquisition system) onto the assembly.

Our main accomplishments this week included calibration. We took the ball launcher out for speed correlation, noting what actual speeds (found using a radar gun) corresponded to what dial setting on the physical device. We found that the velocity is fairly constant coming out of the ball launcher, but that the radar gun requires a good mount in order for it to get accurate readings every time. This is what pushed us towards making a radar gun mount.

We also calibrated a headband accelerometer called the G-Force Tracker. This, along with the accelerometers inside the actual ATD, will be how we acquire the data (and the comparison of the two will tell us how accurate the G-Force tracker is).

By Tyler Jacobs, Concussive Forces and Brain Trauma in Competitive Sports