We’ve seen virtual reality training and other manners of technology take a place in the football landscape in recent years and now robotics has made its way to the field.
The Steelers have spent some time this offseason experimenting with Mobile Virtual Player, a robotic tackling dummy developed at Dartmouth College as a tool to work on tackling that limits the amount of player-on-player contact during a practice session. The robot is still in a testing phase, but can move, weave, cut, speed up and otherwise mimic a ball-carrier.
Coach Mike Tomlin and his staff are figuring out other uses for the robots, which creators hope will become more widely available in 2017.