Dartmouth football now has a new and "safe" kind of tackling dummy. Meet the MVP, an autonomous Mobile Virtual Player designed to reduce injuries and simulate realistic game scenarios with less risk. It's a free-standing, remote controlled, padded dummy that hit the practice field two years ago when head coach Buddy Teevens wanted Dartmouth's engineering school to come up with a safer way to tackle.
Players got their first look at the prototype Wednesday. According to Dartmouth, the dummies cost about $3,500 to manufacture, and researchers are developing a business plan to market it to pro, college, high school and youth teams.