Autonomous Systems Architect
CurrentRoBOPPics is the brain child of Michael Yeager, a business technologist and inventor, tennis enthusiast and fan, who basically found it impossible to schedule enough friends and partners to play tennis as often as he wanted. Not a fan of gyms and treadmills, he wanted a way to workout on a tennis court, to stay in shape, while also improving his performance in league matches every week.He tried practicing by himself on one of the many public courts that sit empty every day. He tried hitting serves, he tried hitting against a wall, but he found these to be as boring and dreary as running on a treadmill.He began experimenting with ball machines at the local tennis clubs. It was great workout, and it was great fun hitting balls, but the scheduling of the court and machine, and the additional cost, were new complications. He then bought a couple of modest ball machines, and started dragging them around to the public courts, but the size and complexity of these proved impractical for daily use.Finally, being a technologist, digital engineer and software developer, he set out to design and build a better tennis workout and practice device.After years of assembling and experimenting with different prototypes he filed for, and was granted, a patent for a "Personal Sports Simulation Robot". You can view this patent at: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=09039547 The BallBopper is a practical and affordable offering based on this patent. A Kickstarter campaign for the BallBopper is now in private preview. The Kickstarter campaign is intended to introduce this personal sports training robot to a group of tennis enthusiasts who will help evolve it going forward. If you would like an invite to view the Kickstarter preview, please send me a LinkedIn message. Thanks.
