VISUALIZATION IN SPORTING CONTEXTS
The Team Scenario
Aqeel H. Kazmi, Michael J. O’Grady and Gregory M. P. O’Hare
CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, University College Dublin (UCD), Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
Keywords:
Visualization, Wearable computing, Physiological monitoring, Sports science.
Abstract:
Wearable sensor systems require an interactive and communicative interface for the user to interpret data in a
meaningful way. The development of adaptive personalization features in a visualization tool for such systems
can convey a more meaningful picture to the user of the system. In this paper, a visualization tool called
Visualization in Team Scenarios (VTS), which can be used by a coach to monitor an athlete’s physiological
parameters, is presented. The VTS has been implemented with a wearable sensor system that can monitor
players’ performance in a game in a seamless and transparent manner. Using the VTS, a coach is able to
analyze the physiological data of athletes generated using select wearable sensors, and subsequently analyse
the results to personalize training schedules thus improving the performance of the players.
1 INTRODUCTION
Pervasive sports monitoring systems represents a
paradigm shift in sports science. Recent advances in
wireless communications, low-power integrated cir-
cuits, sensor design, and energy storage technologies
have enabled the deployment of wearable sensors in
sports monitoring, thereby gaining a more accurate
picture of athlete performance.
Athletes, coaches and sport scientists are con-
stantly searching for clues that can enhance perfor-
mance. Traditionally, a range of laboratory-based
technologies have been harnessed for physiological
measurements. However the performance of ath-
letes in competitions will differ from that observed in
controlled laboratory environments. Pervasive sports
monitoring systems measure physiological parame-
ters in training and competition (subject to the rules
of the sport in question). Such systems use wear-
able sensors to measure physiological parameters and
wireless communication technologies to transmit the
measurements back to base stations for analysis. Ex-
amples of these measured physiological parameters
include heart rate, body temperature, respiration rate,
and blood pressure. Wearable sensors can be woven
or knitted into an item of clothing and worn next to the
skin without disturbing the comfort level or concen-
tration level of an athlete during competitions (Nico-
laou, 2010).
Physiological monitoring systems generate signif-
icant quantities of data. Visualizing this data such that
coaches can make tactical decisions in real-time is an
ongoing research challenge (Bertin et al., 2010). In
this paper we present Visualization in Team Scenarios
(VTS) to monitor physiological performance of play-
ers.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2
presents related research in the area of wearable phys-
iological monitoring systems. Section 3 describes
the architecture of VTS. Section 4 identifies some fu-
ture research directions after which the paper is con-
cluded.
2 RELATED RESEARCH
Wearable physiological monitoring systems for use in
sports scenarios are under development in various re-
search labs. The Smart Vest (Pandian et al., 2008) is
capable of monitoring a number of vital parameters
such as ECG, PPG, heart rate, and GSR in a comfort-
able and transparent manner. The physiological data
monitored by Smart Vest, along with geo-location of
the wearer, is continuously transmitted using RF links
to a remote monitoring and analysis station. Anal-
ysis of all the measurements are carried out in real
time and presented in an appropriate format at the sta-
tion. Validation was carried out to check the consis-
tency and reliability of the data from Smart Vest as
536
H. Kazmi A., J. O’Grady M. and M. P. O’Hare G..
VISUALIZATION IN SPORTING CONTEXTS - The Team Scenario.
DOI: 10.5220/0003276705360539
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS-2011), pages 536-539
ISBN: 978-989-8425-35-5
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Figure 1: The general architecture of VTS.
compared to standard measurement methods. This
has shown varying degrees of success in achieving
the necessary accuracy on all measurement combina-
tions.
Another system, called wearable sensors (Coyle
et al., 2009) (Carpi and DeRossi, 2005) for monitor-
ing sports and training performance operates by mea-
suring and analyzing sweat pH and sodium levels dur-
ing exercise. Sweat composition can change during
exercise as a result of dehydration. Dehydration is
a major issue while training, and it results in symp-
toms such as headache, dizziness, cramps, vomiting,
increased heart rate and so on. The pH and sodium
levels of athletes can indicate more about body condi-
tion. Analysis of these levels can assist athletes in de-
veloping personalized hydration strategies to increase
performance. Since the electrodes were integrated in-
house using Teflon rods and PVC tubing, the resultant
system was not comfortable to wear.
SensVest (F. et al., 2005) measures a person’s
physiological signals, and transmit them to a remote
base station. This research project was specifically
designed for the use of science teachers and students.
SensVest maintains a number of different sensors on
an athlete’s body at all times during an exercise to es-
timate the performance.
In the personal exercise domain, Wan et al (Wan
et al., 2009) have described the Ambient Exercise
Monitor. This system harnesses physiological data for
monitoring what energy is expended in course of per-
sonal exercise.
Though significant research has taken place, the
issue of visualization of physiological parameters in
sporting contexts has received little attention. Like-
wise its use as an aid to decision making has not been
explored to any great extent. In an effort to address
this issue, we have developed VTS (Visualization in
Team Scenario). VTS focuses on aiding the interpre-
tation of captured physiological data through the pro-
vision of an interactive and intuitive interface.
3 SYSTEM OVERVIEW
VTS allows a coach to analyse physiological data sub-
sequent to its capture. VTS is based on wearable vests
that are equipped with appropriate wearable sensors.
These vests capture the physiological parameters of
the players. The generated physiological data is sent
wirelessly to a base station. There, it is stored in a
database for later analysis.
3.1 Architecture
There are three basic components of VTS: Wearable
vests, Database server, and interface screen (in our
case we have used laptop). The general architecture
of the system is illustrated in figure 1.
1. A wearable vest is used to collect physiologi-
cal parameter of wearer’s body including players’
heart rate, respiration rate, skin temperature, and
GPS data. This data is transmitted in real time to
base station, which may a laptop or workstation.
2. A database system receives the physiological data
from the vests, forwards it for display and stores
it.
3. An interface component provides an interactive
graphical user interface to the coach who can per-
sonalize the display if required.
3.2 Implementation
A prototype wearable sports vest with embedded sen-
sors was acquired. The base station was connected
to a laptop which in turn hosted the database and vi-
sualisation components. The core components were
all implemented in the Java. However, visualization
is implemented in the Processing Development En-
vironment (Fry and Reas, 2010). This environment
is available as open source under the GPL. Process-
ing has evolved into full-blown design and prototyp-
ing tool used for large-scale installation work, motion
graphics, and complex data visualization.
3.3 Operation of VTS
VTS operates as follows:
1. All players that a coach wishes to study are
equipped with the vests.
2. The coach requests physiological data from the
vests. The base station then scans an area of about
100 meters in diameter, and returns a list of avail-
able vests. The coach then associates the vests
with individual players.
VISUALIZATION IN SPORTING CONTEXTS - The Team Scenario
537
Figure 2: Standard VTS interface showing various parameters.
3. The data is collected and stored over the course of
a training session or game.
4. The coach can then access the data and visualise
it as they see it (Figure 2).
One interesting feature of VTS is its support for
alarms and thresholds. A coach can set thresholds for
different parameters e.g. heart rate. Once the alarm
values are set, the coach can start analysing the physi-
ological data received from vests. Should an athlete’s
heart rate exceed a certain threshold, the coach’s at-
tention will be directed to this, and they can analyse
prior and subsequent parameters more carefully (Fig-
ure 3).
4 FUTURE WORK
Though data is captured in real time, the current ver-
sion of VTS does not adequately support real-time
analysis. It is planned to enable visualisation of the
data in real-time. More sophisticated analysis tools
are planned. For example the recovery time of an ath-
lete is vital in team sports as this is an objective in-
dicator of how tired they really are. It is intended to
develop algorithms for measuring recovery time and
other performance indicators in real time.
5 CONCLUSIONS
This short paper presented a prototype visualization
tool for wearable sensor systems to monitor the per-
formance of athletes. It is the authors’ contention that
VTS (and similar systems) represents a key develop-
ment in sports performance and coaching. It is prob-
able that many sports in the future will integrate a
range of sensors for monitoring athlete performance
whilst in competition. This will have significant im-
plications for coaches, sports scientists and of course
the athletes themselves.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Aqeel H. Kazmi acknowledges the support of the Irish
Research Council for Science, Engineering & Tech-
nology and Intel Ireland. In addition this work is
supported by Science Foundation Ireland under grant
07/CE/I1147. The practical support of QinetiQ is also
acknowledged.
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538
Figure 3: VTS after an alarm has has been generated.
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