Sports Body Sensor Networks (Sports-BSN)

With the rapid advances in sports technologies, athletes and sports coaches are constantly searching for improved performance assessment methods. Whilst athletic performances continue to improve, accurate training prescription and feedback is important to the consistency of the training outcome and maintaining the performance margin. To maximise the potential of UK athletes at future Olympics, Olympic Winter Games, and Paralympics, there is a pressing need to exploit the latest technical advances in sensing, materials, aerodynamics, biomechanics, and performance equipment design. In supporting the quest for gold in the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012, UK Sports and EPSRC have identified a range of engineering and physical sciences disciplines that through the interaction with the sports community can generate innovative training solutions and sports equipment designs for gaining competitive advantage of the UK athletes. Such a synergy brings the opportunity not just to ensure success at the Games themselves, but to provide a sporting legacy that will underpin the long-term health and success of sport in this country. The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the use of miniaturised wireless Body Sensor Networks (BSN) for providing real-time feedback and in situ analysis of the biomechanical indices of the athletes during training. It is a feasibility project aimed at addressing the technical requirement of Sports-BSN hardware design, miniaturisation, packaging, as well as real-time data processing, sensor fusion, and data visualisation issues. The project brings together an interdisciplinary team from the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, UK Sport and nominated technical expertise working within the elite sport network (Dr Aki Salo, UK Athletics Speed specialist currently based at University of Bath).