News: Bromley Technologies complete Canadian Job with skeleton simulator

The Formula Ice athletes may have missed out on the medals at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver but Rotherham based Bromley Technologies has recently completed a trip back to Canada on their first international tour with their unique skeleton simulator educational experience.

The Advanced Manufacturing Park firm visited Alberta, Canada at the invitation of the South Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), together with Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, the national governing body for bobsleigh sports in Canada.

The trip started at the SAIT Presidential Gala Dinner for over 200 guests including many influential local and national business leaders. The dinner also gave a first opportunity for the women's World Number 1, Canadian skeleton bobsleigh athlete Melissa Hollingsworth to try out the simulator.

The Skeleton simulator has been designed by the team to identify talent who have the necessary natural ability, balance, coordination and core stability, to successfully navigate the skeleton down the virtual bob track. The simulator, through the software, can be tuned by changing the four key engineering principles involved in designing and development of a racing skeleton.

Due to this very unique design the simulator has been promoted by the Bromley Technologies team as a unique educational platform to help to promote design, sport and performance engineering as a stimulating and very real career option.

During the tour the Bromley team presented to over 600 students and parents in the Calgary area, working alongside athletes from the Canadian national s keleton squad to give the youngsters a better understanding of the sport and allowing them to experience skeleton for themselves through the simulator.

The visit also made national news in Canada, with broadcaster CTV reporting on one of the school visits in their daily primetime sports programme.

Mike Maddock, COO at Bromley Technologies said: "The reception we got from everyone was amazing. It seemed odd at first to be taking the skeleton simulator from Britain over to a winter sports nation like Canada, but there is nothing else like it in the world.

"It was clear that the pupils loved being able to emulate their heroes like Melissa and men's Olympics champion Jon Montgomery, whilst also learning more about the science, engineering and technology of sport.

"We live and breathe design and performance engineering and we want to promote to the next generation. We show that it can be a great career choice as engineers and designers are key to the future economy."

Dr. Alex Zahavich, Director – Applied Research and Innovation Services, SAIT Polytechnic added: "Bringing the skeleton sled simulator to Calgary was an excellent example of international collaboration to promote this exciting, highly technical sport. The response at SAIT Polytechnic's President's Gala and at the high schools was beyond what we expected.

"We look forward to expanding our relationship with Bromley Technologies and bringing the simulator back to SAIT and Calgary next year, while working on other projects."

Bromley have a number of booking from schools in the UK for the simulator and have presented to over 8,000 UK children and students in the last 18 months to raise the profile of careers in Design engineering and sports.

The team are already in discussions to repeat the Canadian trip in early 2011 and are looking forward to working with more Canadian schools.

Bromley Technologies website

Images: Bromley Technologies