Ícaro Miguel and Milena Titoneli of the Brazilian taekwondo team are using VR to help their training for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Virtual reality simulates how contestants will challenge the players in real life to allow a training program safe to carry out amid the COVID-19 situation.

Reginaldo Dos Santos, coach of the Brazilian national team in one of the interview, said:

• “We catalogue the movements of opponents and transfer the tool,”
• “We take as a basis what is done in Formula 1.
• “We have an extensive collection of the struggles of our opponents, and we take some athletes from our team who have characteristics similar to those opponents to make the capture of these movements.
• “The idea is to do everything possible to get well in Tokyo and win the medals.”
• “It is a gigantic innovation, and it is clear that the priority is the Olympic athletes, but from now on, we can use it in all Championships.
• “The equipment offers the chance to study all rivals.
• “The idea is to train on the strengths and weaknesses of everyone, and our team believes that the larger the group of people training together, [the better for] us to achieve as much as possible the situations that we will face in the fights.”

Suits with motion-capture technology are developed to help train the team. Milena Titoneli Brazilian taekwondo star mentioned that virtual reality technology would significantly help given the current pandemic situations. According to Milena Titoneli.

• “We are inmates training in isolation, with a strict health protocol.”
• “We do not have the part of the competition that is fundamental to analyse how our performance is. Therefore, this software completes the preparation – it helps a lot to have the measurements and analyses our performance in the most varied physical and organic vectors.”