Stanford Researchers 'Developing A Digital Athlete' To Take Fitness To Whole New Level

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - Scientists in the Bay Area are using technology on real people to develop what they call "The Digital Athlete," saying their work could improve the health of the entire world.

Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering and of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, will lead a nationwide team of scientists, academics, doctors, engineers and athletes over the next decade to unlock the secrets of human performance and overcome the body's weaknesses.

"It's, of course, valuable to study diseases, cancer, neurologic diseases — that's valuable research," he tells CBS SF Bay Area station KPIX. "But it's also valuable to take the flipped approach and take a different lens on understanding human health."

Delp provided KPIX an exclusive look inside the university's Human Performance Lab, an interdisciplinary research facility where athletes wear reflective motion-capture markers and perform various movements atop force-sensor plates in the floor.

The array of motion-capture cameras, similar to those you'd see in a video game or Hollywood production, can detect minute shifts in an athlete's joints. The 3D motion data, in conjunction with electromyographic sensors that record muscle contractions and respirometer readings, will be used to create a predictive computer model of the human subject.

"We're developing a digital athlete," he says. "So we take data like this, motion data, force data, EMG data, and respirometry, and we create a digital model, a personalized model of the athlete. We can assess whether she is susceptible to injuries, how to improve performance. On the computer simulation we could make her stronger. We could induce an injury."

All that information will be crunched together to create a predictive computer model to help focus training and prevent injuries for people at all levels of physical ability.

Delp is one of the directors of the newly-formed Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a public-private partnership between Stanford, Boston Children's Hospital, UC San Diego, University of Kansas, University of Oregon and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. It is funded with a $220 million gift from the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation.

The alliance will spend the next decade designing, testing and hacking their way to improved global health.

"And really unleash an incredible amount of scientific power, to discover the biological principles that govern human performance," Delp says.