helping kids in sports

and also adjusts...

First some low hanging fruit..

I'm surprised that talk of lowering the net in women's college basketball is considered novel - people have talked about it for years.  The argument that it is too costly to update gyms seems a bit silly - I'm sure there would be a lot of competition for retrofit adjustable backboards as well as completely new assemblies.  It would be a shame not to try it - at least as an exhibition.

There is an argument that the fundamentals should be taught better and that makes a lot of sense too ..  but a bit of dunking may make the games a bit more electric and that translates into more fans, which would be a good thing.

Next, with concussion becoming a larger issue in contact sports it seems reasonable to build wearable kit that records impact accelerations.  You can buy football helmets with simple recording accelerometers, but that tends to add hundreds of dollars to the price of a helmet with well instrumented helmets going for more than a thousand.  This also seems like a fertile area for less expensive and more practical designs.

Technology Review notes a partnership between Reebok and MC10 that may produce something interesting next year.

snip

A new product from Reebok and MC10, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will provide a relatively easy way to measure impacts to the head. It uses an unobtrusive, form-fitting skullcap riddled with sensors and stretchable electronics that can be worn with or without helmets.

The product, announced yesterday, won’t be unveiled until early 2013. David Icke, CEO of MC10, says the product would include multiple kinds of sensors and offer red, yellow, or green LED readouts to advise coaches and parents on the severity of an impact.

“Clearly there is a big absence of data out there. Head injuries and head impacts are pervasive in sports – and it’s very difficult to know what happened out on the field. Only a few of the total number of incidents are witnessed by somebody,” he says. “The intent is to have a very simple user experience, to say: ‘Take the kid out of the game.’ ”

...

One of the founders of MC10 speaks at a MIT EmTech talk yesterday  at around 33:00 on their general approach of electronics that can conform to the human body.  Very neat stuff and applications that go well beyond wearable acceleration sensing.