Sport Ball Motion Monitoring With Wireless Impact Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing athletic equipment monitoring devices are often not portable, heavy, lack sufficient battery and processing power, and provide inaccurate or insufficient performance feedback, making it difficult for individuals to assess their athletic activities and improve their performance.
Innovation Solution
A portable electronic device that wirelessly receives motion data from a sport ball, determines the point of impact, and processes this data to provide real-time or post-activity feedback, enabling individuals to improve their athletic performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If existing athletic equipment monitoring devices are made portable, then ease of operation is improved, but device complexity and power consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into separate components: a sensor module attached to the sport ball that collects motion data, and a portable electronic device that receives and processes the data wirelessly. This segmentation allows the monitoring function to be portable while distributing complexity across multiple simple components rather than requiring a single complex device.
Solution Approach 2:
Wireless communication acts as an intermediary between the sensor module and the portable electronic device, allowing data transfer without physical connections. This enables portability and ease of operation while avoiding the complexity of wired connections and power transfer mechanisms.
2Duration of action of moving object
If battery and processing power are increased to support extended monitoring, then duration of action is improved, but weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The heavy processing and power management functions are extracted from the sport ball monitoring system and transferred to the separate portable electronic device. The sensor module on the ball only needs to collect and transmit basic motion data, minimizing its power and weight requirements, while the portable device handles the computationally intensive analysis over extended periods.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs partial processing at the sensor module level (collecting and transmitting raw motion data) and reserves full processing capability for the portable electronic device. This allows extended monitoring duration without requiring the sport ball itself to have high power capacity, as the heavy lifting is done partially elsewhere.
3Measurement precision
If performance feedback is made more detailed and accurate, then measurement precision is improved, but loss of information increases due to data processing requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The sensor module continuously collects and stores motion data in advance, preparing it for analysis. This preliminary data collection ensures that all necessary information is captured with high precision before any processing occurs, allowing detailed feedback to be generated without losing information during the measurement phase.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback loop where motion data is collected, processed, and used to generate performance feedback that is returned to the user. This closed-loop feedback mechanism ensures that detailed and accurate information is provided back to the athlete, enabling precise performance assessment while managing data processing through iterative refinement.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for monitoring the motion of a sport ball impacted during the course of an athletic activity includes determining a motion characteristic of the sport ball for various points in time along a trajectory of the sport ball, displaying, on a display screen of an electronic display device, a video of the trajectory of the sport ball, and displaying, on the display screen, an instantaneous motion characteristic, the instantaneous motion characteristic being the motion characteristic of the sport ball for a point in time corresponding to a portion of the video currently being displayed.