SMART FOOTBALL EQUIPMENT

Dr. Narasimhan is a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who is providing football equipment with remote sensing technology. With the help of her students, they try to measure everything from grip and trajectory to speed and position of almost all kinds of equipment. Their goal is to help officials, coaches, players, and fans determine many things such as whether the ball was caught before it hit the ground, who actually has the ball in a pileup, whether a runner has crossed the goal line, if a player is out of bounds, whether a receiver has control of the ball before he goes out of bounds, and much more. Although there are people experimenting with similar technologies like censored soccer balls, Dr. Narasimhan wants to bring these sensors to all levels of the game.

The Smart Ball is a regulation ball partially unlaced and filled with couch cushion foam. Inside of that is a circuit board containing a GPS unit which gives the ball's three-dimensional position in space and an accelerometer which calculates the ball's speed. Smart Gloves have touch sensors that can transmit information wirelessly to a computer to be analyzed during and after a game. There are 15 sensors on the finges and palm and an animation on a computer screen shows which parts of the glove are in contact wth the ball at any given time. Other products these developers are working on are Smart Kicking Shoes that predict the path and pressure of each kick, Smart Armbands which measure the force exerted at pressure points that could help running backs reduce the likelihood of fumbling, and the Smart Helmet that contains a tiny IP camera so the player can get a first-person view when they watch films after the game.

Currently, their products transmit information once a second and are only accurate to within 30 feet. Because of the inaccuracy, there are no colleges or professional teams willing to try the equipment, but the team hopes to one day be able to transmit information four times a second and combine data with information from fixed GPS receivers near the field to provide much tighter measurements.