Concussions In Football

Consequently, concussions have been a big epidemic in football. A Concussion forms when there is a strong force that is applied to your head and your brain bounces of the hard wall of your skull. This isn’t the only way for a concussion to form. According to WebMD, “An impact elsewhere on the body can create enough force to jar the brain”(2016) For example, think of a walnut inside a jar of water, the water standing for the brain fluid and walnut standing for the brain. When a hard enough force is applied to the jar the walnut is shifted and makes impact to the jar, skull. This creates cracks in the walnut, concussions in the brain. Woodpeckers smack their heads against trees with about 1200 g’s of force. They successfully do this without suffering
from any brain injury. They have evolved and they now put there tongue in through there nose and wrap there tongue around there brain, preventing it from hitting the hard walls of there skull. Sadly, we are in capable of protecting the brain internally because to do that we would have to perform surgery on the brain which is Concussions are considered functional, because it only affects the biochemical process of the brain, but the trauma changes the brain function temporarily.
Although, in sports like football, repeated head to head contact can lead to long term brain damage. Many former football players have suffered from long term head injuries, this lead to things such as, “ long-term health consequences of concussion, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease, and other forms of dementia, Parkinson's disease, or severe cognitive impairment.” according to Weil(2016). When suffering from a concussion, you must deal with many symptoms such as, brief loss of consciousness after the injury, memory problems, drowsiness or feeling sluggish, confusion, dizziness, double vision or blurred vision, nausea, headache,or vomiting, sensitivity to light or noise, balance problems, and slowed reaction to
stimuli.

Unfortunately, in football there is repetitive head to head contact. Its very hard to teach players how to tackle because it is very dangerous to each player. Having said that, players have to repeatedly hit each other to learn a critical part of football. As reported by Gammill(2015), “A football player gets hit more in practice than they ever do in a game because of the repetitive nature of drills and instruction”. This proves the fact that players receive more injuries in practice than they do in games.

Fortunately, there are simply four ways to prevent head related injuries, protective equipment, technique, awareness, and training.
But the solution that I found to solve this problem is the M.V.P.. The M.V.P. is a mobile virtual player that acts as a football player. Its has the capability to move around the field, juke, and simulate a real tackle without the cautions of a head injury. Same as said by Buddy Teevens,Dartmouth football coach, “M.V.P. can simulate a real football players size, weight, and agility by replacing an in game tackling experience”(2015).This robot can reduce the huge amount of head on head contact during practice. It does this by not allowing players to tackle each other, but to tackle the moving robot. According to Head Coach, Buddy Teevens, “80% injury reduction by non contact practice”(2015). The M.V.P. is easily controlled by a wireless remote control that can be operated by the coach, assistant coach, or another player. They will be linked together via Bluetooth. Robot can also be set on an autonomous route which is a pre-programmed and given a route that can be run over and over again. The M.V.P. is simply moved by a ball mechanism controlled by omni-wheels. A
ball mechanism is where a ball, preferably a basketball, is driven by an omni wheel to direct the ball in different directions. Omni wheels are regular wheels with small discs around the circumference which are perpendicular to the turning direction.The purpose of this is to allow the robot to slide laterally with ease. The anchoring ball mechanism will be surrounded by padding to protect tacklers from hitting the metal or damaging the internal wiring. There will also be a Sensor attatched to the head of the robot. By this, I can get a calculation of how many times the robot has been hit in the head and try to calculate wether the robot would have a concussion or not. Its seemed to be said that it takes 5-10 g’s to form a brain injury.