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

 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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