Deadliest Warrior TV Show Uses National Instruments LabVIEW and NI CompactDAQ to Help Determine Battle Outcomes

When staging battles between the most feared warriors in history, the hit Spike TV show, Deadliest Warrior, uses National Instruments software and hardware to help determine the winner. The show engineers selected NI LabVIEW graphical system design software, the NI CompactDAQ data acquisition platform and NI DIAdem data management software to conduct impact tests and measure and analyze the biomechanics of injury. The ease of use, quick setup, and seamless integration of NI products makes them ideal for meeting the show’s need for a fast-time-to-measurement solution that can be reconfigured easily to perform a wide range of measurements.

“Deadliest Warrior” pits warriors such as pirates and knights against each other to measure their combat skills as well as the impact and severity of the weapons used. The show uses the latest technology and world-class fighters to reenact 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 and was the Spike TV channel’s best-selling series in 2009 across all download-to-own platforms.

“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 analyze measurements quickly, and, as an added bonus, they are visually compelling for a TV audience.”

LabVIEW and NI CompactDAQ serve as a single software and hardware interface, respectively, to thirdparty sensors that take measurements from the weapons and fighters used in the battle simulations. Because of the modular nature of NI CompactDAQ, “Deadliest Warrior” engineers easily can swap out NI C Series modules from the chassis and quickly perform a variety of measurements. Additionally, DIAdem makes it easy for the engineers to bring multiple test measurements into one software environment to quickly compare, analyze, and visualize data from the sensor measurements and determine the results.

Geoff Desmoulin and other scientists answer the Deadliest Warrior question using data collected from real weapons, input from weapons experts, and simulated battle conditions, to determine the damage inflicted by these historical warriors. Once the data is collected, it’s analyzed to determine which warrior would theoretically win the battle. The show is an action-packed combination of exciting fight sequences and scientific testing to back up the conclusions.

Using NI DIAdem, Geoff and his team are able to quickly load the data collected from their varying sensors, analyze it for maximum impact, and display the data in a way that clearly shows the results to the viewers at home. With ever tightening production schedules, Geoff can use the interactivity of DIAdem to save time on analyzing and viewing the test data. And with advanced visualization tools such as video synchronization and 3D sensor mapping, the true impact of the weapons and warriors can be seen by the viewers at home.

DIAdem is software for managing, analyzing, and reporting data collected during data acquisition and/or generated during simulations. DIAdem is designed to help engineers make informed decisions and meet the demands of today’s testing environments, which require quick access to large volumes of scattered data, consistent reporting, and data visualization. The DIAdem DataFinder, which is optimized for managing data from multiple sources and different formats, helps correlate data based on its descriptive attributes.

National Instruments is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation, and embedded applications.


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