Press Release
DRIVES GIVE GREAT BALL CONTROL AT SOCCER CIRCUS
Soccer Circus, the brainchild of Kevin Keegan, is unique.
It is the world’s first ever fully interactive football attraction,
engaging visitors in a series of challenging football tasks
including ball control, shooting and passing accuracy; and then a
great finale with all the atmosphere of a soccer
stadium.
And it is in the finale, the ‘Super League’ big match challenge,
with the automated control of the ‘targets’ and the operation of
the ball retrieval and delivery system, that AC servo-drives from
Control Techniques play such a vital team role.
Soccer Circus has taken nearly 10 years to develop from an
initial concept for the ‘Super League’ by Kevin Keegan to its
fruition at the Xscape Leisure Park at Braehead just 10 minutes
from Glasgow city centre. Managing Director Clive Mockford
has assembled and led a team of engineers who have designed,
prototyped and produced the game systems at the company’s Research
and Development Centre on Teesside.
“From the beginning, we set out to design our systems
in-house, using a range of technologies to deliver the world’s
first interactive football attraction. We have formed
excellent strategic relationships with our technology suppliers,
most notably Control Techniques,” says Clive.
Design Engineering Manager, David Birchall has led the work on
the control systems. “The versatility, communications and
programmability of the Unidrive SP has proved to be integral to the
final design. We’ve cut out the need for a central drives
controller, with intelligence distributed around the drives,
delivering a system that provides effective multiple
redundancy. Should an error in the automation system occur,
the show goes on, in the best tradition of show business!”
On arrival at Soccer Circus, teams of up to four people register
and receive a non-contact team card. This provides access and
initiates each of the four games, enabling the system to keep track
of both individual and team scores.
In the ‘Training Academy’, after the automatically activated video
team talk by one of the Soccer Circus coaches, there are three
games to test each individual’s ball skills. ‘On-the-Spot’ uses
randomly activated target modules to test ball control. ‘Pass
& Receive’ uses a moving light target to improve passing and
anticipation skills. ‘In-the-Zone’, a more athletic game,
pushes players to react quickly, dribble with the ball and pass
accurately.
Then after another pep-talk, players come to the finale, feeling
some of the rush of adrenaline that professionals must feel as they
walk through the tunnel to the expectant roar of the stadium
crowd. This is the Powerplay Super League, where the players
work as a team to knock down targets. Designed to test power
and accuracy, this game comprises a group of full-size models of
footballers, each colour coded to give different scores.
Players have to kick ten footballs, aiming to hit the targets to
activate a sensor that initiates the retraction of the player below
floor level. The footballs are automatically delivered to the
feet of each player throughout the game until its conclusion.
A total of 28 Control Techniques Unidrive SP drives in servo
mode are used for target control and the ball retrieval system.
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