Tulsa Bull Butt Monitor Makes SF Tech News

[Kiah]

From the SF Chronicle Tech Chronicles . . . .

Let's talk bull

ESPN's XtremeBulls.com tells us about XPower, a new high-tech gizmo that is changing the way we gravity-loving couch potatoes watch professional bull riding on television. (Don't give us that blank look. The NSA has been data-mining your plasma screen).

Electronic sensors in the device placed on the bull's back end (is this a polite way of saying rump?) collect data so that software can analyze the bull bucking. The device is the invention of Stephen Warton, director of new technology for Tulsa, Okla.'s Winnercom, a sports production company that bought the rights to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's Xtreme Bull series.

Wharton, who grew up somewhere in Silicon Valley, wanted to quantify the mechanics and physics of a bull ride.

He got the idea while attending a "bucking bull futurity," apparently an event where robots instead of cowboys are strapped to the backs of young bulls. He has tested the gizmo at bull events in Red Bluff, Clovis and Tulsa.

Now, if the ESPN folks aren't pulling our legs, that's an invention that really kicks butt. -- Jessica Guynn

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/06/16/BUG77JEUQ51.DTL&type=business