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Interfacing real world ball skills with the computer game
By Mike Hanlon
August 21, 2006 The Computer Human Interface (CHI) comes in many different guises, and has come a long way since we punched holes in cards with paperclips. Indeed, games appear to be the key laboratory for the CHI as we continually see new ways of getting real world and virtual world to mix in a computer game. In recent times we’ve seen such interesting game interfaces as the Bodypad, Xboard, Entertaible,, the mental typrewriter, and the Virtusphere and now we’re really impressed with ICE’s Striker Pro which is a soccer striking game where the player takes a penalty kick at a success goal – just the World Cup was decided. The machine records the speed and angle of the soccer ball after it is kicked and reads the information into the game in real time so a virtual ball is kicked into the game with the same power and trajectory for an incredibly realistic experience, complete with goalie histrionics, umpires call and crowd feedback. The machine retails for US$11,000 and the level of difficulty can be adjusted from two year old all the way to world cup professional. Now the technology used to create the Striker Pro is being adapted to other sports and the developers of the Striker Pro, eballgames is seeking distribution partners wishing to develop games for other football codes, golf, baseball, hockey, tennis or any other sport. “We have been getting it all working just right for the last few years and we now know we can build the interface and the software for any sport, and deliver 100 machines on time, so now we are seeking people to work with around the world,” said eballgames founder Tony Course. Read More
From the Trikke to the Skki - product extension of the year
By Mike Hanlon
July 18, 2006 Our prize for the best product extension of the year goes to the company that designs and manufactures the three-wheeled cambering Trikke and has now developed a new snow sport from the design and named it Skki. The Trikke is an ingenious human-powered machine that is both chainless and pedal-less. The rider propels the Trikke by slaloming in a graceful, non-impactful fashion, working the torso and arms as well as the legs to generate speeds akin to that of a mountain bike. The best part of the Trikke is the downhill cornering, where the cambering gives it a carving feel akin to that of a racing motorcycle. The Skki is not a logical product extension until you see it, as it offers an identical steering and riding motion that’s just perfect for the snow. There’s some big advantages too – it’s easier to learn than skiing or snowboarding because there’s a set of handlebars for turning, can be done in any comfortable snowboot and hence doesn’t involve any ski-boot pain, it’s 1000 percent less likely to cause a knee reconstruction, and it lacks for nothing in terms of thrills, spills and fun because you can be carving like a pro inside a few minutes! Most importantly, experienced skiers love it too as it’s an entirely new form of snow thrill. Check out the extensive image library. Read More
Wrist-Mounted Oximetry System
By Mike Hanlon
June 30, 2006 As biosensor technologies evolve and miniaturise, we’re likely to be able to monitor in real time a myriad of aspects of the human condition and learn more about our physiology than ever before. A perfect example of this is a new wrist-mounted oximetry system designed to monitor the vital signs of people experiencing sleep disorder symptoms, such as sleep apnea which afflicts millions. Characterized by repeated breathing interruptions in which the brain arouses the person to resume breathing, people with sleep disorder symptoms are typically referred to sleep clinics where their sleep is monitored overnight. The PulseOx 7500 enables home screening of sleep-related symptoms such as oxygen saturation and heart rate. The wrist-mounted monitor collects data while the wearer sleeps and the data can be downloaded for analysis via the sleep apnea reporting software supplied with each unit. Read More
Quinspin unravelling the mysteries of soccer striking skills
By Mike Hanlon
June 24, 2006 The collection of key data with which sportspersons can improve their skills is still in its very infancy. Heart rates, recovery times and sprint times are measurements of fitness but are only one layer of the data and don’t reflect the magical skills which define champions. The time is fast approaching when we will be able to measure exactly how much David Beckham can bend the flight of a soccer ball, how much Roger Federer can make a tennis ball drop with spin or how Shane Warne varies the flight and turn of a cricket ball. Champions have the ability to flight a ball, to make it spin, curve and dip at will, and these things are hard to see, much harder to measure and infinitely harder to teach . The advent of Hawkeye is beginning to shed light on the mysteries of tennis and cricket upon which the former player experts were once the only available diviners of wisdom, but until Quinspoin, there has been no equivalent for the World Game – soccer! After years researching the dynamic testing of footballs including first-hand experience working with adidas to test +Teamgeist the official 2006 FIFA World Cup match ball, Loughborough University expert Paul Neilson is part of the team of inventors at Sports Dynamics that has developed the world’s first coaching tool to objectively measure the killer skill of the perfect strike. Read More
GPS golfing device tells you how far it is to the green
By Mike Hanlon
June 5, 2006 It’s only a game, but we’ve mentioned before the amount of attention that golf gets from inventors and entrepreneurs. In the last few years we've written about a Golf robot designed to help everyone feel the perfect swing, an ingenious wireless motion capture system designed to provide detailed remedial assistance for your swing, a new technology from Yale which enables you to hear your golf swing and numerous golf simulators (here, here, here and here) so you can practice all day long. We've reported on an electronic golf ball finder, a golf ball finding system and a pair of golf ball finding glasses. Just recently we've even covered a solar-powered Golf Bag and Bushnell's Yardage Pro Range Finder. Now there’s a new US$400 handheld golf course measuring device that's designed to answer the age-old question: “How far is it to the green?” It shows distance from the tee (or wherever else you are on the course) to the front, center and back of the green, together with up to fifteen hazards. Courses are available for downloading from the web or players can map courses themselves using the device. Read More
Nike+iPod
By Mike Hanlon
May 24, 2006 Nike and Apple have announced a partnership designed to bring the worlds of sport and music together with the launch of innovative Nike+iPod products. The first product developed through this partnership is the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows Nike+ footwear to record time, distance, calories burned and pace with info displayed on the iPod nano screen and real-time audio feedback through headphones. The new Nike+ Air Zoom Moire is the first footwear designed to talk to the iPod and Nike plans to make its other footwear styles Nike+ ready too. It’s simple and in our opinion gives you scant info you can’t get better another way – it’s just an in-shoe sensor and a receiver that attaches to the iPod. While we think the first product is a bit lame, it’ll be interesting to see what happens when Apple, the most consistently innovative company of the last 25 years, and Nike combine technologies with the reach of both companies. With two such innovative parents, we suspect some interesting children will be spawned. Our educated guesses at what they would logically be evaluating as potential products might include new capabilities such as a heart rate monitor to make the 24 hour a day calorie counter more accurate and to enable other useful data to be monitored, GPS functionality for additional info on position and speed and so we can be notified when we’re passing points of interest and hear a podcast about them should we choose, a blood oxygenation and lactose monitor for people who run really long distances, … oh, and maybe a cool Nike cap with a little heads up display incorporated so we can watch video podcasts without headbutting a lamppost. Read More
The BallFinder SCOUT electronic golfball finder
By Mike Hanlon
April 23, 2006 We’ve written about a few golfball finding mechanisms in our time, but none are as expensive or as accurate as the BallFinder SCOUT. The device exhibits an astonishing capability in digital imaging and tracking technology, using a video-based camera which can search up to 600 square feet in one second or almost 1/7 of an acre in 10 seconds. Each two megapixel image (two million pixels) is analysed pixel by pixel in nanoseconds and once a ball is found the device vibrates and reveals the ball’s location on the screen. The SCOUT finds balls hidden deep in rough if just three dimples are showing. As little as 1% of a standard white ball needs to be visible before BallFinder SCOUT will find it and guide a golfer to its resting place. Read More
The MP3 sports shoe to grow into full body network
By Mike Hanlon
April 10, 2006 “Like many great ideas, this one grew out of my frustration with existing products on the market,” says LL International’s President and CEO Lavetta Willis. “I love to work out to music but also wanted to be hands free and wireless. When hiking or running, I want to reach for a water or cell phone without the complications of an mp3 player strapped to my body, never mind the wires always getting in the way.” The initial application under the Code M System product umbrella is a shoe that delivers music to a wireless headset. The delivery system consists of two key components seamlessly built into Dada shoes, offering easy access to your music with no wires and no digital music device to carry on your person. Willis adds, “Hands free working out! Hands free living!” Read More
World’s first fully customised football boot
By Mike Hanlon
April 11, 2006 Rapid manufacturing and rapid prototyping machinery is not new, and has been written about many times across these pages – in essence, these machines print 3D objects in the same way an inkjet printer works. Each time we run such a story, it is extraordinarily well read as a high proportion of our readers explore the latest developments in the process. Now it seems, the rapid manufacturing concept will yield a new era in manufacturing products for individuals based on three dimensional scans of their body – garments, helmets, or boots that fit just one person perfectly. British company P2L has announced a football boot designed uniquely for the individual player using selective laser sintering. The Assassin is the name of the new soccer boot featuring laser sintered outsoles and hand-crafted one-piece leather uppers. Each boot is sculpted to the individual's foot. The upper is made of exclusively sourced calfskin from Italy which can be manipulated using sophisticated technology to adapt colour, appearance and function to the athlete's needs. Read More
PowerBreathe- dumbells for your lungs
By Mike Hanlon
April 2, 2006 As science has focussed on human fitness and wellbeing over the last few decades, our understanding of the benefits of exercise has grown immensely. “Use it or lose it” applies to every aspect of human performance, and it’s now been proven that regular mental exercise improves your ability to think. So perhaps we should consider specialised training for the lungs? The lungs are without doubt one of the keys to all human performance as they supply the body with oxygen. Every 24 hours the average human takes over 20,000 breaths, with physically active people pushing towards 30,000 breaths. Most people assume breathing is controlled automatically, like our heartbeat, but the truth is that we can learn to breathe better. That’s the thinking behind the POWERbreathe training system – by exercising and strengthening the muscles we use to breathe (the inspiratory muscles) we can help alleviate breathlessness, improve all-round fitness and even maximise the effectiveness of other muscles used in exercise. Read More
A new breed of computer human interface for sports video game fans
By Mike Hanlon
March 22, 2006 From the time the first steering wheel controller was hooked to a computer, the future of video game controllers grew exponentially larger. Whatever the game being played, there was bound to be something that could be manufactured that would enhance the realism of the experience. Qmotions is a company devoted to creating new kinds of interactive experiences that combine real-world physicality with the immersive virtual environments found in computer and console video games and at last month’s American International Toy Fair 2006 it rolled out several new such interfaces, most notably its Xboard (for surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding and windsurfing video games), and Qmotions-Fun Fitness, a new device that converts recumbent bikes into video game machines, offering a compelling way to get fit and play games at the same time. There’s also a golf and a baseball controller, offering a diverse range of indoor fun for otherwise outdoor activities. Read More
Soccer World Cup promises forefront of live sport services
By Mike Hanlon
March 5, 2006 The FIFA World Cup has inspired more than a few brave plans for the employment of technology over the past few years, many of which never materialised. One that will be on show when the world descends on Germany in June and July is Servingo, a personalized portal designed to help the three million expected visitors to find their way around the twelve World Cup venues from Berlin to Munich. Every conceivable aspect of information related to the tournament is aggregated through the portal which was built at a cost of eight million euros with a view to helping World Cup visitors feel that they are "visiting friends". The portal is amazing, with a range of innovative features such as personally-tailored information systems and personal diary pages, but the highlight is the 3D reconstruction of scenes from the soccer match that enables the viewer to view a replay of key scenes from any point in the stadium – from the referee's perspective or the eyes of the goalkeeper. To make this possible, the team constructed 3D models of stadiums and compiled catalogs of players. An ingenious software program manages to generate the scenes from TV images. Sophisticated algorithms compare the 'visual template' of the virtual 3D players with the TV image and keep adjusting the virtual player's posture until it matches the video image. In this way, picture by picture, a scene from the match can be reproduced from any angle. Read More
Ultraportable ultrasound in use at Torino Winter Olympics
By Mike Hanlon
February 27, 2006 At each Olympic games, each country seeks to optimize its available athletic talent pool with the latest training, medical and technological expertise because the difference between a medal and nothing can be miniscule. A perfect example of this is the British Olympic team’s use of the GE Healthcare LOGIQ Book XP, the world's smallest, full-function multi-purpose portable ultrasound unit at the Torino Olympic Winter Games. The portable 5 kilo diagnostic scanner "in a backpack" allows instant diagnosis and more accurate examination, diagnosis and treatment of athlete injuries slope-side, rink-side or in the locker-room. Read More
Scientifically-designed bedrooms offer athletes a competitive advantage in Torino
By Mike Hanlon
February 27, 2006 On the basis that sleep is so important and so basic that it could make the difference between winning the gold or the silver at the Olympic Games, a unique partnership has evolved for the Olympic Winter Games now taking place in Torino. With a view to giving U.S. Olympians a competitive advantage, Hilton Hotels combined with Alertness Solutions to optimize their sleep environment by incorporating a number of critical elements including enhanced bed size and bedding, a usable work area and an effective wake-up mechanism. Working with Dr. Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist and president of Alertness Solutions, Hilton modified 160 resident athlete dorm rooms last October at the Colorado Springs U.S. Olympic Training Center to help increase the athletes' alertness and reaction time for peak performance. Read More
The solar-powered Golf Bag
By Mike Hanlon
February 24, 2006 If you’re a very wired dude and a golfer, the Soldius solar powered golf bag is an absolute must-have item. Innovative Dutch company Soldius makes a range of innovative solar chargers that include a pocket device and a number of carry bags with built-in solar panels to enable charging of personal electronic appliances on-the-go. The Soldius golf bag was a logical extension for the range, having been trialed as a concept last year and drawing enormous global interest. There will be four solar-powered bags available ranging in price from US$200 to the full-leather US$800 top-of-the-range bag. Read More
New suit for athletes offers improved energy output and muscle management
By Mike Hanlon
February 20, 2006 Adidas has debuted an athletic second skin at the Turin winter Olympics which it claims offers a significant improvement in energy output of the wearer. In controlled laboratory tests conducted together with the University of Calgary, the new Clima TechFit cross-country suit offers an average 5.3% improvement in energy output and 1.1% faster sprint time when measured over 30 metres. Most importantly, the tests measured a 1.3% reduction in oxygen consumption when wearing the new suit. The suit works by using compression strips that link the legs and the upper body with the power centre of the body. The suit employs a number of technologies to work its magic, one of which involves the compression strips supporting leg muscles and reducing muscle vibration and oscillation, thus reducing energy loss and muscle fatigue for better “muscle management.” The power bands embodied in the suit along key muscle groups contract and expand together with the muscles and thereby store energy when stretching and return energy when contracting back. Through the linking and interaction of all muscles, the suit enables greater efficiency to be achieved. Read More
Redesigning the cricket helmet
By Mike Hanlon
February 28, 2006 Cricket is one of the oldest and most original of all modern sports, originating somewhere between 700 and 900 years ago in England, with international competition beginning a century ago and almost no major rule changes since. As incredible as it may seem to the uninitiated in this most beguiling of contests, each international match lasts 30 hours over five days and often ends without a result, with each international series comprising five such matches (150 hours) also frequently ending without a clear winner. Played with a small, very hard ball which is bowled (thrown with a straight arm), at up to 160 km/h, it is illustrative of the staid mindset afflicting the governing body of the sport that helmets for the human being in the firing line were not introduced until 30 years ago despite a history of horrendous injury. Like nearly everything else in a sport afflicted by stubborn traditionalism, the design of the cricket helmet has trailed well behind the technologies available and with mid-2004 university tests showing that helmets can delay a batsman’s reactions by up to a quarter of a second, you’d think that we might have seen a rethink of cricket helmet design since then, but we haven’t noticed one. Inspired by those tests, designer Ravinder Sembi has reengineered the cricket helmet with a view to overcoming this fundamental problem. Read More
Polar F55 heart rate monitor combines cardio and strength training
By Mike Hanlon
January 29, 2006 Finish heart-rate monitoring specialist Polar invented the first wireless heart rate monitor (HRM) in 1977 and has been a step ahead of the rest in helping people understand the importance of monitoring your body’s most important organ ever since. It is now going one step further in helping consumers better understand their bodies and achieve their fitness goals with a new total body workout model, the Polar F55 heart rate monitor. Incorporating both strength training and cardio exercise, the Polar F55 is ideal for exercisers looking for a complete full-body workout. Read More
adidas shows first modular soccer boot
By Mike Hanlon
January 31, 2006 adidas unveiled a new soccer footwear concept late last week in Germany which could have far-reaching ramifications for the world's fashion footwear and sporting footwear industries. The boot is modular and will be known as the +F50 TUNIT. This new soccer boot concept allows players to customize, adapt and tune their boots to any weather, any pitch and their very own personal style. The revolutionary +F50 TUNIT is easily constructed from three interchangeable components: the upper, the chassis and the studs. Each component comes in a variety of styles and functions. Simply by mixing and matching their components of choice, each player can easily build and tune their boots. Read More
Sports bra monitors heart rate with built-in heart monitor
By Mike Hanlon
December 23, 2005 We’ve written a lot about heart monitoring and the advances in monitoring technologies over the last few years, reporting on Adidas’ Project Fusion, the BodyBugg, Garmin’s system for cyclists, Dual Sports combined heart rate monitor and MP3 player and Polar’s RS200sd Running Computer. With the exception of the first two, all of these monitors require the wearing of a chest strap and while this is sometimes difficult and uncomfortable enough for men, it creates much more of a problem for women. Now there’s an answer from heaven - a heart sensing sports bra. Read More
The soccer ball V2.0
By Mike Hanlon
March 16, 2005 UPDATED IMAGES AND TECHNICAL INFO The World Cup of soccer is fast approaching and one of the features of the world's most watched sporting tournament is the latest soccer ball from adidas – the +Teamgeist. And well might you wonder how a soccer ball can be improved, given that technology has been working on the issue for well over 100 years. The devil is in the detail as you’d expect, but suffice to say that the new 14-panel design has resulted in a ball with the most consistent performance characteristics ever, enabling the players to show their true skills. There are fewer seams, so the ball is rounder and performs more uniformly, regardless of where it is hit. The more perfect the sphere is, the more balanced it will be, offering greater accuracy due to the predictability of its flight. The new panel shape harmonizes the energy displacement and minimizes the amount of corners, while the larger panels allow for a cleaner kicking area. Perhaps the biggest difference the players will find with the new balls will be how they play in the wet. Normally, a wet and heavy ball behaves quite differently from a dry one. It flies slower through the air, has a lower bounce and is more difficult to curl. A patented Thermal Bonding technology makes the new ball virtually waterproof with identical performance characteristsics wet or dry. The FIFA Approved Standard for water absorption stipulates no more than a 10% weight increase – the +Teamgeist’s blitzes this with less than 0.1 % weight increase. Similarly, it has significantly improved on all standards for uniformity of rebound and pressure retention and shape and size retention. Clever design and technologies has enabled adidas to reduce manufacturing tolerances to a new level . Read More
Yaktrax - snowchains for your feet
By Mike Hanlon
October 30, 2005 We put snow chains on our cars to give us traction on ice and snow, so this is one of those ideas we’ll accept fairly readily. Indeed, the Yaktrax is such a good idea that it was recently on show in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as "masterfully designed product for everyday use". The Yaktrax Walker was chosen among 122 other products (such as the Paper Clip, Post-It-Note and Band-Aid) as one product that "makes peoples lives easier and safer". There are two models of Yaktrax – one for walking and one for active sports, and the simple propostion is that you stretch these onto your shoes and 1000 biting edges suddenly give you a solid footing. The active sports version, named the Yaktrax Pro, has a removable performance strap for stability under the greater stresses experienced at running speeds. Read More
The Polar RS200sd Running Computer
By Mike Hanlon
Though the advanced Polar-Adidas Fusion training system is still some way off, Polar's new RS200sd running computer offers most of the benefits without the clothing integration, at a fraction of the cost. Features include a suite of software to analyse what you’re doing with your bod – calorie and heart rate tracking and even a fitness test. There are 5 heart rate zones that can be customised to support your individual training needs and graphics guiding the user to the desired training result. The screen effectively becomes a user-configurable dashboard for a human being when used with a Polar S1 Footpod advanced inertial sensor to provide real time speed, pace and distance. Read More
Yale technology enables you to hear your golf swing
By Mike Hanlon
September 7, 2005 Robert D. Grober, Yale professor of Applied Physics and Physics, has combined his passion for golf and his professional expertise to produce a unique and effective real–time audio biofeedback device for teaching and training golf. Grober developed a golf club that has motion–detecting sensors, similar to those used for safety airbag deployment in cars, embedded in the shaft. Sonic Golf’s unique feature is the use of real–time audio feedback. “We were able to identify a signal from the sensors related to the speed of the club,” Grober said. “We convert this signal into an audio soundscape that is universally intuitive to golfers and instantly interpretable, providing real–time audio feedback on the tempo, timing and rhythm of the golf swing.” Read More
Compelling new GPS-based training system for cyclists
By Mike Hanlon
September 2, 2005 It seems we are suddenly approaching the tipping point in the GPS market as the perception of GPS moves from an interesting high-tech novelty to a handy tool everyone can use every day. Garmin has introduced a new line of integrated personal training systems focusing on the needs of recreational and advanced cyclists. The Edge is a compact, lightweight, waterproof unit that has the ability to accurately monitor pedalling cadence, heart rate, calories burned, vertical profiles (via a a barometric altimeter), climb and descent, altitude, speed, distance, and time. Because the Edge is GPS-based, the information may be overlaid onto a cyclist's course map, including hills and curves, so the cyclist can easily analyse every aspect of their workout. The Edge 305 with heart rate lets you see whether you are training too hard or not enough. The heart rate monitor data is stored with each track point for post-workout analysis. There’s also “Virtual Partner” which lets you "race" a virtual competitor, making training fun and you can also "race" against a recorded course to try to match previously set speeds at every point along the way and a full “Training Center software” which gives you the ability to create workouts, manage and download courses, and create a detailed post-ride analysis that charts your performance. Read More
rob yates
- November 26, 2009 @ 12:49 UTC
