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With an aim to bring gladiatorial combat to the modern age, Unified Weapons Master is a high tech sport based on an ancient combat.
We spoke to CEO David Pysden.
Unified Weapons Master or UWM, started out as a crazy idea about five years ago.
And since then, it's evolved from being completely insane to highly ambitious and now totally achievable.
The genesis of the idea came from my business partner training throughout Asia and seeing incredible weapons-based martial artists that no one had ever heard of.
And the reason for that is, there's no format or forum where those guys can compete.
So he thought wouldn't it be great if there was a way to showcase the skills of these guys and use technology to bring that to the fore, and that's what we've done.
The construction of the armor is quite a complex process and it's been interesting because we've had to solve a number of technical challenges in building the armor.
Armor has been around for thousands of years.
No one has previously had to incorporate sensors in the armor that, that measure the force and location of strikes to the armor.
And all of the other electronics that we include in it.
So in terms of how the materials are constructed this is like a sandwich of different materials.
There's a, a high impact later which prevents penetration, that's typically a carbon fiber type layer.
And then there are polycarbonate layers.
And what are called elastimaric foams which are high impact absorbing foams.
So they reduce the shock and impact of combat with weapons and sandwiched in between those we have these sensors that measure all of the forces that are being applied to the armor in real time.
The sensors do report back to a scoring system so we have built.
A system with medical data underpinning it.
That data includes fracture profile data and blunt trauma data.
And we know, objectively, how much force the body can withstand before it breaks, or before critical damage is incurred.
And so what the sensors are doing is measuring all of the forces that are being applied to the armor.
But the scoring system interprets that as if the competitor was not wearing armor knows how much damage would have occurred to that competitor.
There is a feedback process built into the armor.
We have a lighting system that we're building into the suits which will visually display the damage that's be incurred to different parts of the body in real tine.
There's also audio feedback to the competitor that tells them how much damage has been sustained.
And then finally, we have a referee who will be part of the competitions.
And that referee has feedback going to him.
And when someone has lost a virtual life or become incapacitated, that ref will step in and give them effectively a standing eight count.
And if they have lives left, cuz it's a bit like a video game.
We, we give them multiple lives.
Otherwise it can be over.
Quick quickly and then they'll be allowed to fight on and that actually prolongs the entertainment experience for the audience.
Historically, there's 96 different weapons-based martial arts that are practiced all around the world and, and those arts have evolved over hundreds and even thousands of years.
But there's really nowhere you can see those arts practiced and, and the people that do practice it have nowhere that they can compete to test how far they've gone.
So what we've done is create the opportunity for a competition where people from all around the world you know, Japanese samurai masters, Chinese Shaolin staff masters, Indian Kalaripayattu masters.
Incredible weapons-based experts to come together in a single global competition, and compete.
To find out who is the world's best weapons master.
That's why it's Unified Weapons Master.
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