Preventing Injuries by baseball and tennis players

Themes: Life Science & Health, Software Technology & Intelligent Systems

 


A TRL is a measure to indicate the matureness of a developing technology. When an innovative idea is discovered it is often not directly suitable for application. Usually such novel idea is subjected to further experimentation, testing and prototyping before it can be implemented. The image below shows how to read TRL’s to categorise the innovative ideas.

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Summary of the project


An increasing number of people play sports such as tennis or baseball. Where more training can help to increase a player’s overall performance, it also increases the risk for injury. Currently, movement can be captured by marking the bony landmarks of a player and subsequently capturing the player’s movement with cameras from different kinds of angles. Although these measurements are very accurate, the set-up has to be very precise and is very time consuming. Hence, not ideal in a sports training setting. The researchers aim to develop a special shirt or sleeve that can measure the performance of tennis and baseball players. By equipping a shirt with special sensors that can measure the acceleration and angular velocity of a pitcher they develop a new method for capturing body motion. By combining the motion data of players with questionnaires over time in which users report their physical condition and injuries the researchers want to develop a feedback mechanism that can help both player and trainer to find the balance between enhancing performance and reducing injury risk.

What's next?


The next step is to make a shirt with a feedback module that is easy to use for players who want to improve and monitor their performance whilst reducing injuries. 

Prof. dr. DirkJan Veeger

 

ir. Bart van Trigt

Ton Leenen MSc

prof dr. Frans van der Helm

dr. Marco Hoozemans

Sports Engineering Institute

Faculties involved

  • ME

Additional information