As football fields once more ring with cheers and shouts of encouragement, one local Catholic parent’s thoughts turn to a future collegiate competition — an automated contest staged without a single person on the gridiron — paying tribute to a cherished son lost in an auto accident.
Next spring, a dozen teams will compete in the 11th National Collegiate Robotic Football Conference Championship — and Bill Hederman, a parishioner of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Vienna, will again witness a dream that became a surprising reality.
Bill’s son, Brian — a 1994 Bishop O’Connell High School graduate and parishioner of St. Michael Church in Annandale — was home on summer break when a car crash took his life. A first-year engineering student at the University of Notre Dame, Brian was known for his kindness, sense of humor and creativity.
“Brian was someone who loved his family, his friends and Notre Dame,” said Bill, a Notre Dame engineering alumnus. “And we all loved him back.”
Brian’s combination of wit and imagination undoubtedly inspired a drawing — illustrating a fanciful robot football quarterback — Bill discovered several years after his son’s death.
“I suspect he could have been doing that when he was supposed to be listening to an engineering lecture,” Bill laughed.
Amused and intrigued, the image stayed with him. After successfully convincing Notre Dame to hold an energy ethics conference, Bill was later emboldened to present them with the notion of robotic football.
“I said, ‘Brian’s sketch of a robot football player; what if Notre Dame could bring the synergy of football and their traditions there, to robotics?’ That’s when I started to work on the plan.” Bill asked another Notre Dame engineering grad — Skip Horvath, a parishioner of St. James Church in Falls Church, and eventually Bill’s fellow commissioner of the league — to review it. “I said, ‘Can you take a look at this idea, and see if this is insane?’ ” Horvath enthusiastically endorsed the concept.
In 2006, a proposal was sent to the outgoing dean of Notre Dame’s engineering college. Two years later, the new dean — Peter Kilpatrick, now president of The Catholic University of America in Washington — greenlighted the project. “I kept Brian in mind, and felt like we were still doing things together,” said Bill. Finally, April 20, 2012, Notre Dame’s Stepan Center hosted the first intercollegiate robotic football game between the Fighting Irish and Ohio Northern University. Notre Dame was victorious, 26-7.
So how does robotic football work?
Remote controlled “players” — small motorized, wheeled platforms sporting sensors, infrared beams, mechanical and computerized devices, and their own “jersey” numbers — smash into one another with a jarring force comparable to their human counterparts.
Competing under modified NCAA collegiate football rules, centers assisted by servomotors “snap” miniature footballs to quarterbacks, while receivers can take a handoff or “catch” passes in attached bins. Referee whistles shriek, and “injured” robots are hauled to the sidelines for repairs. It’s a fast moving and finely calibrated choreography that deftly mimics the real thing, while teaching engineering and STEM principles invaluable for the students’ future employment.
“Many of our students have earned internships and full-time jobs due to their involvement in robotic football,” said Notre Dame aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Craig Goehler. “Being a part of a multidisciplinary team — mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science — helps to illustrate our students’ ability to work effectively with other engineers to create complex electromechanical systems.”
The winner’s prize, based on Brian’s drawing and dubbed the Brian Hederman Memorial Trophy, features a fully realized robot quarterback sculpture by Thomas Marsh (See related story). Bill Hederman was inspired to commission it after reading a Catholic Herald article profiling a life-size statue of Mary, created by Marsh for St. Peter Church in Washington, Va. A scholarship fund also commemorates Brian, and his friends planted a memorial tree at Notre Dame in 1996.
Brian had a short life, said childhood friend Father J.D. Jaffe, pastor of Christ the Redeemer Church in Sterling, “but full of impact.”
“On the day of the funeral there were so many people who had come to pay their respects and to pray for Brian and for his family that it still is one of the longest funeral processions that I have seen,” he recalled. “I still wear a cross around my neck on my scapular that has engraved on the back, ‘Brian H. 7/26/95,’ ” said Father Jaffe. “It reminds me to pray for him and to seek his prayers of intercession.”
Heatherington is a freelancer in Alexandria.
