Dr. Mark Williams part of Evening Lecture series return

Published 3.30.22

Can you spot the future superstar soccer player in this crowd?

If your choice is anyone other than short, slight boy on the second row, second from the right, bad news: You missed Lionel Messi.

Dr. Mark Williams, Senior Research Scientist at IHMC, has made it his business to learn what makes an elite athlete like Messi the best. His March 2022 talk as part of the IHMC’s popular Evening Lecture Series shared some of the common traits of the greats. The Evening Lecture Series has returned to both the Pensacola and Ocala IHMC campuses. To keep up with the latest schedule of talks, visit https://www.ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures/

Environment, birth order, adaptations, learning, and practice are all factors that build sports expertise, Williams said.

So, too, is there room for science to explore the psychological and cognitive differences sports experts possess when compared to sub-experts in their field, Williams said.

For example, as soccer players in the Premier League Academy system age up, game intelligence skills become more key than the strictly physical gifts that can set them apart from their peers early on.

Elite athletes have some common psychological characteristics. They:

• Pick up more visual cues from their opponents’ bodies. That’s because their hours of practice have created a rich library of cues and scenarios about what might happen next.
• Have superior pattern recognition.
• Have more effective visual search behaviors. That’s reflected in something called the “Quiet Eye” phenomenon. That’s the period of final visual fixation before the performance of the final phase of movement — when it really counts, what your eye lasers in on before you commit the physical movement.
• Have greater robustness under pressure (fixate centrally and use peripheral vision to gather info).

What also begins to matter more is what Williams calls, the psychology of excellence. Skills like motivation, mental toughness, perfectionism, resilience, and coping become crucial components for an expert, he says.

And while yes, the popular notion that it takes 10,000 hours of practice — at least — to be great at something has scientific merit, expertise is also developed by how those hours are spent. Experts, Williams shared, avoid arrested development by engaging in deliberate practice: Practice with a purpose.

Experts devote more time to practicing weaker skills, exhibit more self-reflection, use more physical and mental effort during practice, and may find practice less enjoyable.

Understanding how expertise is built can improve coaching and teaching strategies.

The challenge of coaching, for example, is “what’s the least amount feedback the learner needs to sustain change in performance?” Williams says. “To infer that learning takes place, I have to see that change in performance contributes to future practices.”

What we learn about how expertise develops in sports can have implications for other fields, including the military, law enforcement, hospital emergency departments, and aviation, William says, all fields where expertise, developed in an often high-stress environment, can mean the difference between a life-or-death outcome.

To learn more about Dr. Mark Williams’ work, check out his book “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made.”

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. For more information, visit ihmc.us. 

Architect chosen for human performance research complex project

Published 3.29.22

Progress is continuing on the new building project for IHMC’s Pensacola campus. 

An architect was chosen in March 2022 for the project, which will create a research hub for human healthspan, resilience, and performance work. The winning team was a group of lead locally by DAG Architects, whose principle is Dave Luttrell, in partnership with Brent Amos from Cooper Carry, headquartered in Atlanta.  

DAG is a Northwest Florida firm. Cooper Carry is a national firm with substantial experience in biomedical facilities.  

DAG and Cooper Carry have stepped up to the plate within days of being selected and have been working with IHMC team on an NIH research building funding application. The next step will be soliciting a construction management firm to join the team.  

The new IHMC Healthspan, Resilience and Performance Research Complex will be a leading-edge lab and office building. The projected four-story 44,000 square foot facility will include space for administrative support, outreach and training, in addition to state-of-the-art laboratories for the scientific team. 

It expands IHMC’s downtown campus to three primary buildings and dedicates a space for the center’s research into improving the resilience and performance of people. 

Since IHMC’s founding in 1990, it has built an international reputation for excellence and innovation in robotics and artificial intelligence. The HRP team’s work is focused on improving the performance of elite military members given the stressors they face. But the ultimate applications could be far-reaching, offering substantial healthspan benefits to the general population. 

The goal is for the team to occupy the new building in January 2024. 

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. For more information, visit ihmc.us. 

Jerry Pratt honored with “Most Influential Paper” award

Published 2.28.22

The work that put bipedal robots on their feet came from IHMC — and its key authors were honored by an international conference recently.

The groundbreaking work of IHMC’s Senior Research Scientist Dr. Jerry Pratt was honored at the 20^th International Conference for Humanoid Robots virtually in late summer of 2021.

A journal article authored by Pratt with co-authors Sergey Drakunov, Ambarish Goswami, and John Carff, an IHMC senior research associate, was named Most Influential Paper — a distinction spanning the 20-year history of the conference.

“Capture Point: A Step toward Humanoid Push Recovery” has been cited more than 1,000 times since its publication in 2007.

Today, key ideas from this project are the foundation of multiple humanoid robots’ ability to balance and recover from unexpected pushes.

The Capture Point paper has become a critical reference point for the field of bipedal robotics.

Expanding on mathematical models of balance, Pratt and his team developed formulas that allows bipedal robots to identify the area on the ground that they must step or shift to in order to avoid a fall if pushed.

The original paper was demonstrated in simulation, but soon after publication, Dr. Pratt says, IHMC researchers, collaborators, and peers in the field were able to put Capture Point ideas into practice on real robots. The IHMC team and other participants in the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge used Pratt’s findings to enable their robots to navigate the course.

Looking back at the significant impact this groundbreaking paper has had over the years, Dr. Pratt credits the dedication of his coworkers and colleagues and IHMC’s culture of innovation for his success and recent recognition at the 2021 Humanoids conference.

“We knew we were on to a good idea, so we did put a lot of effort into making sure it was high quality,” he says of the paper.

Pratt received the Humanoids Most Influential Paper award virtually this summer. He and colleagues continue to expand upon Capture Point concepts in the lab. He and his team are working to make IHMC’s humanoid robots lighter and more able to approximate the agility of human muscle-actuated limbs.

Senior research scientist joins IHMC team from Georgia Institute of Technology

Published 2.16.22

How can you put the “spring in your step” for an exoskeleton?  

The answer could exploit key principles of locomotion neuromechanics to build wearable devices that improve the economy, stability and agility of human movement.   

It’s something Dr. Gregory Sawicki has been working on at Georgia Institute of Technology. Sawicki is bringing his expertise to the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition as a senior research scientist.  

He joined IHMC in January 2022 on a part-time appointment.  

Sawicki will embed with the robotics, exoskeletons and human robotics interdependence group focusing on two broad areas.  

“One is to help guide current human exoskeleton projects, such as developing exoskeletons for injury mitigation in industrial settings for the (U.S. Department of Energy)  and improving controllers for the Quix Exoskeleton for improving mobility for people with spinal cord injury,” Sawicki said.  

The second is to help expand the research portfolio in human-machine robot interaction by consulting on preparation of new proposals to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense, he said.  

His work at the Physiology of Wearable Robotics (PoWeR) Lab has focused on how the biology behind the power of lower-limb joints can be adapted to robotic devices to help both healthy and impaired people walk better.  

According to their website, The PoWeR lab’s goal is creating lower-limb wearable exoskeletons that are “symbiotic” for the wearer, maximizing the energy needed for assisted walking.   

Sawicki has been working on the design of a portable, passive elastic exoskeleton and clutching mechanism that can provide ‘the spring in your step’ by storage and release of elastic energy in a parallel elastic element worn about the ankle — an exo-tendon of sorts — while walking.  

As part of IHMC, Sawicki maintains his status as associate professor at Georgia Tech, where he splits his time with appointments in both the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences.  

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s in mechanical engineering from the University of California-Davis. He finished his Ph.D. in human neuromechanics at the University of Michigan at Ann-Arbor. He also worked as a National Institutes of Health-funded post-doctoral Fellow in integrative biology at Brown University. 

Design proposals sought for new IHMC research center

Published 1.28.22

A $20 million hub of research into human healthspan, resilience, and performance is moving closer to coming out of the ground. 

The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition has issued a Request for Qualifications for architectural, engineering and construction administration services. This RFQ can be found at https://www.ihmc.us/2022building/ 

Proposals are due Feb. 11. Once finalists are culled from the applications, presentations will be scheduled. A decision is expected by Feb. 28, 2022; construction is expected to begin later this year. 

The new IHMC Healthspan, Resilience and Performance Research Complex will be a leading-edge lab and office building. The projected four-story 44,000 square foot facility will include space for administrative support, outreach and training, in addition to state-of-the-art laboratories for the scientific team. 

It expands IHMC’s downtown campus to three primary buildings and dedicates a space for the center’s research into improving the resilience and performance of people. 

Since IHMC’s founding in 1990, it has built an international reputation for excellence and innovation in robotics and artificial intelligence. 

The HRP Center will extend that reputation for excellence in a new direction and reflects a strategic expansion of the vision of IHMC founder and CEO Ken Ford. 

“IHMC’s international reputation in robotics and artificial intelligence speaks for itself,” Ford says. “Our Healthspan Resilience and Performance team will focus on innovative ways to extend the capabilities and resilience of high-performing humans such as astronauts, fighter pilots, and elite special operators.” 

The HRP team’s work is focused on improving the performance of elite military members given the stressors they face. But the ultimate applications could be far-reaching, offering substantial healthspan benefits to the general population. 

Dr. Marcas Bamman, the senior research scientist who leads the HRP team, sees the center’s work as something that covers “molecules to the whole human.” 

“It’s more than applied science,” he says. “It’s seeing who performs a task well, unraveling the how and why, and taking what we learn to optimize ways of improving each person’s abilities.” 

The goal is for the team to occupy the new building in January 2024. 

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. For more information, visit ihmc.us.