NI joins the battlefield for Deadliest Warrior

03 June 2010

A TV show is using National Instruments products to quickly determine battle outcomes of contests between warriors such as pirates and knights. The “Deadliest Warrior” programme implements LabVIEW and CompactDAQ software and hardware to conduct impact tests and measure and analyse the biometrics of injury.

The show pits warriors against each other to measure their combat skills as well as the impact and severity of the weapons used. The show uses technology and world-class fighters to re-enact battles and fighting styles of each warrior and then uses measurement data to determine who would win in a head-to-head competition. The first season of the show averaged 1.8 million viewers.

“Deadliest Warrior is a hit with our viewers because it allows us to answer the age-old question of ‘Who would win in a fight?’ using real, cutting-edge technology to determine the outcome,” said Gary Tarpinian, “Deadliest Warrior” Producer. “Because time is money on a TV show, we needed a solution that could be set up quickly and was capable of taking measurements from a lot of different sensors. National Instruments software and hardware products deliver the flexibility and accuracy we need to acquire and analyse measurements quickly, and, as an added bonus, they are visually compelling for a TV audience.”