Guide Voice: A project originally designed to
make school physics lessons more interesting could be one of the
stars of this year’s Olympics!
Engineers at the UK’s University of Birmingham have teamed
up with researchers in Athens to design a wearable computer which
can remotely monitor the performance of athletes.
00:18 SOT – Dr. Chris Baber, Reader in
Interactive Systems, University of Birmingham -
“We’ve just come to the end of a three year project
funded by the European Union; it’s involved partners in
Austria, Germany, Italy and Greece and of course the University of
Birmingham. The work has been looking at the development of sports
equipment to help school children learn about physics. As we
developed the kit it became apparent that we could use the
equipment for looking at sports performance”.
00:41 Athlete
putting on belt
c.u.
belt at waist
Wide
of athlete picking up chest sensor
c.u
fastening chest sensor
Wide
of athlete picking up wrist sensor
c.u.
fastening wrist sensor
Guide Voice: A lightweight belt receives
information from sensors strapped to the athlete’s chest and
wrist, which is then transmitted to a computer. This information
can be used to track the acceleration, pace and body temperature of
the wearer, looking at the way they use energy in their particular
sport.
00:59 SOT – Dr. Chris Baber -
“We take a range of readings from the equipment;
we’re looking at heart rate partly because that’s a way
of measuring energy expenditure and partly because it’s a way
of looking at stress. We measure movement through accelerometers so
we can look at the way in which the person is moving. Combined, we
can get a very good sense of the person’s energy expenditure,
how hard they’re working during the performance of a
particular activity. We can look at that for a specific activity or
we can use it to analyse the entire match so we can see if people
are getting fatigued at a certain points in time.”
01:34 Wide
– athlete practicing Basketball shots
c.u.
athlete dribbling basketball
Wide,
athlete shooting basketball hoop
Wide
– Volleyball player serving
Wide
– players on volleyball court
Wide
– Volleyball game in action
c.u.
player returning shot
Wide
– players on court exchanging shots
Guide Voice: Because the equipment was
originally designed to demonstrate the principles of energy and
motion it is applicable across a full range of sports. For example,
in volleyball, when the player hits the ball, the force on the hand
and the impact on the ball must be as equal as possible in order to
produce a good shot.
01:54 SOT – Catherine Allen, Senior Sports
Science Officer, University of Birmingham - “The
sort of information that we can gather from this equipment gives us
an idea of the stress that players and athletes are undergoing both
in training and during match situations. It can identify whether a
player is becoming over-trained, which is quite important if you
need to cut back on their training, but it can also evaluate how
their training programme is going and if they’re getting out
of their training programme what they should be.”
02:15 Wide
– monitoring equipment on table in sports hall
Close
pan across equipment
Guide Voice: The pre market prototype of the
equipment has been produced by a Greek company and will be on
display at an exhibition of developments in sports equipment, being
held in Athens alongside the Olympic Games.
02:26 SOT – Catherine
Allen - “There are a number of future
possibilities for this equipment. At the moment we use a video
capture with our bio-mechanists who assess athletes’
performance but it doesn’t tell you the whole story, so I
think this sort of equipment can combine with the video analysis
that we get from our bio-mechanists, also interlinked with our
physiological data, and come up with a more complete picture of an
athlete.”
02:46 End
of cut piece
Additional Material:
02:50 SOT – Dr. Chris Baber -
“The measurements we’re taking are movement using
accelerometers mounted on a person’s wrist and leg in these
cuffs. They transmit wirelessly to a belt unit which the person
wears around his waist. And in here we have the receiver for the
accelerometers plus another accelerometer which we use for body
movement and also a receiver for picking up heart rate which we
record from a chest strap which is a standard heart rate recorder.
All of the data is collected together in a central processor unit
and transmitted wirelessly to a base station, which is this unit,
connected to a computer.”
03:31 c.u.
computer and hands
Extreme
c.u. computer screen and data
3
shot of Dr Baber and researchers
c.u.
Volleyball player
c.u.
Catherine Allen playing volleyball
Wide
– volleyball action
Medium
wide – volleyball action
Push
through from Catherine Allen in action to Chris Baber at
computer
Overhead
view of sensors and computer on table
c.u.
and pull out showing motion sensor in basketball
04:36 END
