Speed sensors for sport

Question

Fair warning: I'm a newbie when it comes to Arduino, so if I'm not too great at describing things, let me know so I can learn!

I have recently built a fairly accurate laser timer to time sprinters through a section of a soccer pitch, giving a nice reading of their average speed through the zone.

The limitation is that we would love to be able to see their speed as a progressive measurement throughout the sprint.

My problem? I have NO idea where to start. Google has so far come up empty...

All I have is the following link, Best of the 2015 NHL All-Star Skills Competition, illustrating the sort of thing we would like to accomplish. The bit in question starts at around 0:35 when they are talking about sensors in the players' jerseys.

Any one able to point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

Kinovea is good but this would be post processing not live. You need record video and then you can track each runner on time. Another one is Typhon program but it involves programming and calibrating (then you can track live).

Answer 2

You can use photo cells. Just get some light sensors and direct lasers on to them. I got 100 lasers for £10 from eBay. You don't need to connect them to any controller, just connect them to a power supply to provide light for sensors. The sensors I got from eBay were, I think, 100 for about £5 or £10, then you can use an Arduino Mega and connect sensors to it.

When you cross the sensor, light will trigger and send a signal to Excel (you can use parallax program) and use Arduino code for interrupts when the sensor is triggered, you will get data to Excel (time and triggered sensor). If you call sensors like: first one 1 millisecond, 2 milliseconds, and so on, so you know what distance and what speed. But I think would be tricky if you need to measure a few guys simultaneously. It should work for single one though.

Answer 3

I would use an ultrasonic sensor pointed at them it will give you a list of distanced at the rate that the sensor collects information (e.g. 5Hz) this could be used to plot a graph of distance over time then a graph of speed over time, then acceleration over time ect.

Answer 4

You will likely need to buy a relativly high quality GPS for each runner. Alternatly, if you could get a camera mounted so it could see large portions on track from a good angle it could probably perform pretty well with the right optical recoginition code.

IMU's are not going to be capable of tracking a runners velocity. Even constrained to linear motion the position and velocity measurements from integrating a consumer accelerometer become garbage in a few seconds because of accumulated error. Once you add the fact that the sensor will not be level all the time and your angle estimation is at best within 1 degree, I'd estimate the velocity and position of a runner recorded by a normal 9-dof IMU would be irrelevent after at most 5 seconds.

Have a look at the table on this page for a detailed analysis of orientation based errors:http://www.chrobotics.com/library/accel-position-velocity

Answer 5

An option would be to use a GPS module which would give you actual speed accurately, this data can be logged to EEPROM or SD and downloaded later or it can be sent wirelessly to a base station.

There is a wearable GPS module from adafruit, there are a few tutorials on getting started with it. You can the make a jacket or something light that can go onto the sprinters with the system attached.

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You could use an IMU(Inertial measurement unit), this uses an Accelerometer, Gyro and Magnetometer. There is an article on using IMUs for measuring velocity of an object with basic modules and not using the expensive systems.

This article by CH Robotics covers a starting point, also googling this should give a whole load more of links. As the article says:

It depends entirely on how much accuracy is needed. In general, accelerometer-based position and velocity estimates from low-cost sensors ... are very poor and are simply unusable.

Answer 6

Your best bet would be to use a module of Gyro, Accelerometer and Magnetometer much like MPU-9150. These devices communicate using I2C and you can log in data about the direction and the change in direction as well as acceleration. Using this data you can easily find out the speed in a particular direction and even overall data like the average speed, distance travelled, etc.

Another idea is using the accelerometer to measure a jerk.A jerk can be taken as a footstep and using appropriate calculations you can find out how much a person has moved throughout the sprint.

You can use ultrasonic sensors too which would tell you the position of the sprinter from a point but they have their disadvantages like small pressure changes due to air will affect the readings and you won't get accurate reading.