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Dr Simon Choppin and Dr Tom Allen are acting as guest editors for a special edition of Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology. The issue looks at the use of predictive modelling in sport and how it can be used to predict new behaviour, essentially how technology influences sports performance! If you’re an academic and have some work which you’d like to submit, we have further information here, including progress with the edition and information on how to submit.
The velodrome which will host the track cycling events at the 2012 Olympics in London is now open. The facility is the first to open in the Olympic village and has been given the title of the ‘best in the World’. When a country hosts a major sports event, such as the Olympics, they want to show off their facilities to the world and create a lasting legacy. This usually means impressive architecture, such as the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, or state-of-the-art transport links and infrastructure. The engineers behind the new velodrome have gone a step further by designing the facility specifically to allow the cyclists to ride faster and hopefully break world records. In addition to a specially designed track, the air temperature in the velodrome will be higher than usual to reduce aerodynamic drag acting on the cyclists. For those of you worried about breaking a sweat whilst you watch, don’t worry the spectator area will be nice and cool!
Although not an avid follower of winter sports, I noticed that the world record for the ski-jump was broken on the 11th of February. Johan Remen Evensen of Norway jumped 246.5 m at the Nordic Vikersundbakken ski jumping hill. The video below shows the jump itself.
The American science magazine; Popular Science recently posted an article regarding a new basketball sensor system. The system is able to track a player’s performance as they dribble, pass or make a shot, although from the article it is unclear whether this system is legal for use during competition or strictly training only.
Sensor systems in sport
Hawkeye is a familiar sensor system used for a number of sports, not only to govern the game (line-calling in tennis for example) but also to provide metrics and visualisations for a modern television audience hungry for stats. However, accurate multi-camera systems such as Hawkeye come at a great cost in terms of use and installation.
What is interesting about the new basketball sensor system is that it is contained within the ball itself. The company behind the technology, 94Fifty, is a startup from the University of Michigan and aims to provide an affordable coaching system for basketball teams at all levels.
The difficulty in embedding a sensor in a sports ball is that it has to be substantial enough that it won’t be damaged during the rigours of play, but also light enough that it does not affect the behaviour of the ball in any significant way.
The Adidas intelligent ball is an example of sensor integration into sport equipment - ruled out by FIFA
My curiosity was piqued recently on a last-minute Christmas shopping trip. As I wandered round the sports section of a local branch of a department store, my mind was struggling to contend with the mental challenges of garish festive displays, oppressive crowding and music so good it’s only played for a few weeks every year. As the drudgery wore on, my eye was drawn to what seemed to be an exciting new product, it was presented very well with attractive graphics and sleek matt packaging. The box contained what seems to be a thin rubber bracelet with two small holographic discs embedded diametrically opposite each other. What did it do? The box claimed it was ‘Performance Technology’ but even after prying the box open and scanning the contents I could find no explanation or instructions on how this technology should be used.
The Power Balance Bracelet
Day two in Vienna and all’s going well, the conference started off with a fantastic keynote lecture by Benno Nigg discussing impact forces and muscle activation in running. It was interesting to note he stressed the importance of muscle activation in the running strike and not just peak force, which has been used recently to promote barefoot running. Muscle activation is a good indicator of fatigue levels and should reveal if wearing trainers can reduce the effort required to run as there’s been no evidence that running barefoot reduces injury.
He also mentioned that the promotion of barefoot running roughly has a 25 year cycle (big news in 1960, 1985 and 2010), if this blog is still going in 2035 and barefoot running becomes big news again I’ll try to remember to mention it. (See here for some videos of Benno and more detail on his work)
On the 18-20th November, Leipzig (Figure 1) in East Germany played host to the ANSYS Conference & 27th CADFEM Users´ Meeting. John Hart and Tom Allen from the Sports Engineering Research Group were in attendance, leaving behind cold wet Sheffield in exchange for cold wet Leipzig. ANSYS produce Finite Element (FE) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. FE software is generally used for analysing mechanical problems such as a football impact, CFD is generally used for aerodynamic problems such as modelling the flow around a skeleton bobsled.
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