Soccer Circus, the brainchild of Kevin Keegan, is unique. It is the world’s first ever fully interactive football attraction, engaging visitors in a series of challenging football tasks including ball control, shooting and passing accuracy; and then a great finale with all the atmosphere of a soccer stadium. And it is in the finale, the ‘Super League’ big match challenge, with the automated control of the ‘targets’ and the operation of the ball retrieval and delivery system, that ac servo-drives from Control Techniques play such a vital team role.
Soccer Circus has taken nearly ten years to develop from an initial concept for the ‘Super League’ by Kevin Keegan to its fruition at the Xscape Leisure Park at Braehead just ten minutes from Glasgow city centre. Managing Director Clive Mockford has assembled and led a team of engineers who have designed, prototyped and produced the game systems at the company’s Research and Development Centre on Teesside.
“From the beginning, we set out to design our systems in-house, using a range of technologies to deliver the world’s first interactive football attraction. We have formed excellent strategic relationships with our technology suppliers, most notably Control Techniques,” says Clive.
Design Engineering Manager, David Birchall has led the work on the control systems. “The versatility, communications and programmability of the Unidrive SP has proved to be integral to the final design. We’ve cut out the need for a central drives controller, with intelligence distributed around the drives, delivering a system that provides effective multiple redundancy. Should an error in the automation system occur, the show goes on, in the best tradition of show business!”
On arrival at Soccer Circus, teams of up to four people register and receive a non-contact team card. This provides access and initiates each of the four games, enabling the system to keep track of both individual and team scores.
In the ‘Training Academy’, after the automatically activated video team talk by one of the Soccer Circus coaches, there are three games to test each individual’s ball skills. ‘On-the-Spot’ uses randomly activated target modules to test ball control. ‘Pass & Receive’ uses a moving light target to improve passing and anticipation skills. ‘In-the-Zone’, a more athletic game, pushes players to react quickly, dribble with the ball and pass accurately.
Then after another pep-talk, players come to the finale, feeling some of the rush of adrenaline that professionals must feel as they walk through the tunnel to the expectant roar of the stadium crowd. This is the Powerplay Super League, where the players work as a team to knock down targets. Designed to test power and accuracy, this game comprises a group of full-size models of footballers, each colour coded to give different scores. Players have to kick ten footballs, aiming to hit the targets to activate a sensor that initiates the retraction of the player below floor level. The footballs are automatically delivered to the feet of each player throughout the game until its conclusion.
A total of 28 Control Techniques Unidrive SP drives in servo mode are used for target control and the ball retrieval system.
At the start of the game the 20 targets, mounted on linear actuators with a long stroke length, are raised into their starting position. Each linear actuator is powered by a Unimotor under the control of a 5.5 kW Unidrive SP, each fitted with an onboard Programmable Automation Controller called SM applications. On the back of each target is a Fieldbus I/O module bus coupler which sends an analogue signal directly back to the drive. Each hit on the target is assessed and, if the impact is sufficient, triggers the drive to retract the target back below the playing surface.
A separate PLC assesses the database, reading all of the team cards, initiating the games, monitoring the scores and communicating with the 20 Unidrive SP servo-drives via Profibus to start and stop the Super League game.
Footballs feed down into two ‘sumps’. At any one time, there are 200 balls in the system. Two conveyors, with a series of cleats, run through the sumps picking up 10 balls at a time. Sensors check that there are 10 balls on each conveyor before indexing around to deliver them to the two transfer positions, where linear actuators load the balls onto the four delivery conveyors. Again, Unidrive SP AC drives in servo mode control each of these eight axes, the six conveyors and the two linear actuators. All of the drives are 5.5 kW Unidrive SP AC drives fitted with SM-application modules. Encoders on the back of the motors and on the conveyors, feed back to the conveyor drives, enabling the SM modules to detect any loss of synchronism, indicating a system jam. Interactivity between drives is achieved through Control Techniques’ own high-speed network CT-Net. Programming on the modules also implements ball-counts and position, feeding the data back to the master PLCs via Profibus.
In the central control room, two Control Techniques CTIU operator interface units, with customised displays, provide information and instant access to the system. A Show Controller that synchronises all of the audio and visual presentations and the lighting as the teams progress through the various games communicates with the Automation System, synchronising the whole operation.
Unidrive SP is the world’s most advanced ‘solutions platform’ AC drive, configurable into five operating modes – open and closed loop, vector, servo and regenerating modes - connectivity to most industry standard networks and accepting 14 position feedback protocols.
With a range of plug-in module options, its on-board programmable controller can be supplemented with high-end PLC processors, customer programmable application modules are also offered with a library of software solutions.
All of the drive panels were built by GA Control Systems of Harrogate. The company was also responsible for a range of other elements of the build programme.