Introducing Our Coach's Dashboard
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Biomechanics as a service is about helping other helps athletes move better.
While we would love Reboot’s growth to be driven by the value of our biomechanics infrastructure, we know it will be equally determined by how easy it is to access our pipeline.
In pro baseball, a lot of the work is done for us. Most MLB teams have million dollar plus motion capture systems installed at their stadium measuring every pitch and every swing over 300 times per second.
In fact, most also have state of the art installations at their spring training sites and minor league affiliates…and that number only continues to grow.
In other words, MLB clubs are well prepared to hop on the “biomechanics train”.
On top of that, these clubs are equally ready to hop off the train- mostly due to the people in their front office.
They have biomechanists who want the skeletal data we deliver, data scientists looking to build on top of our proprietary metrics, and coaches well versed in bringing our actionable reports to the field.
Simply put, these off ramps allow us to operate.
However, “operating in MLB” is not our goal.
Rather, we want to:
be the dominant and default biomechanics provider to pro teams, as well as
grow vertically to colleges and academies.
In order to reach our goal, we need to do two things:
Build better on ramps. Our MLB partners should be able to analyze any athlete anywhere, and we should offer the same world class analysis throughout the baseball world.
Build better off ramps. Working with Reboot data and reports should be simple. Our MLB partners demand it, and it makes vertical expansion throughout the sport possible.
Introducing the Reboot Dashboard
The On Ramp
The biomechanics train above is great for MLB clubs, allowing the pro team to be on the same page and constantly innovate.
But what about the scout on the road? Or the college coach without MLB level support? Or the academy owner looking to build better athletes?
They need something simpler.
They need the ability to get world class biomechanics from raw video.
Is It Good?
Anytime someone tries to move biomechanics away from the lab, they get the same question: “How good is the data?”.
And we proudly answer: good enough.
Good enough means we won’t claim the data received from an iPhone matches a marker based system, nor will we tell you it perfectly replicates million dollar plus markerless installations.
But that is the wrong bar. Because that is not the alternative.
You can’t take a marker based motion capture system to every college field. Nor can you install seven figure markerless systems at every academy.
And neither can accompany a scout on trip after trip after trip.
But an iPhone? That goes anywhere.
Answer the Question- Is It Good?
So what do we really mean by good enough? We mean two things:
Our Machine Learning Algorithms are best in market.
To get there, we trained our single camera machine learning model on the mountains of 3D biomechanics data we have at our disposal, evaluating all types of pitchers and deliveries.
When looking at joint angles for the pitcher’s throwing arm (the thing that moves the fastest and is therefore the most difficult to track) we found our output correlated with an r-squared of .90 and a mean squared error of 10.9 degrees.(There have been few published studies on this topic, but this at minimum matches the work done by ProPlay and Driveline.)
Our analyses maintain there accuracy better than the raw data due to a reduced sensitivity to slight deviations in joint angles.
Before doing any calculations, we create our own skeleton model that incorporates our first principles understanding of the constraints of human movement.
As a result, we smooth the data and limit deviations that may exist from suboptimal data capture.
In summary, for pro clubs currently using Hawk-Eye or KinaTrax or Simi? Keep doing what you’re doing.
But for the rest of the world? We’ll get you close enough.
The Off Ramp
Now, single camera motion capture is an important step 1.
But it’s only step 1- as a good on ramp is useless without any easy off ramp.
For MLB clubs who currently pull our data into their own front ends, they (again) can keep doing what they’re doing.
For everybody else?
Our Dashboard provides an easy off ramp- a simple way to view reports, track progress, and bring what they learn to the athlete.
View Reports
All Reboot coaches will start at their home page. Here, they can see what sessions are processing and which ones have been completed.
Obviously coaches want to go far beyond that.
With a click of the button, coaches can view any recent report, search for a specific athlete, and view their entire history.
Moving Forward
To fit in with Reboot’s goal of building tools that help coaches help athletes move better, we built our Dashboard to be clean, simple, and easy.
We know we are not the star. We are not even the person behind the star.
We are the technology behind the person behind the star.
For coaches, the the goal is to help athletes perform better. If they can do that, their mission is complete.
And if we can help a coach on their mission, we have succeeded in ours.