iPlay

Streamlining sports sensing and real-time feedback

From flexible, lightweight LED display solutions to sensor matrices and camera-based motion tracking, various developments lead to significant potential in the professional sports, fitness, gaming and health sectors. These technologies make it possible to gather large amounts of data on the user’s movement in real time and interact with mobile devices. In addition to targeted feedback, this also enables immersive experiences. However, current innovations only include limited visualization elements, awkward VR goggles and give almost no feedback. Moreover, most systems are extremely expensive.

Two highly-targeted use cases

iPlay will target two use cases: recreational sports and fitness on one hand, and rehabilitation in professional athletics on the other.

In the case of fitness, the project aims to apply the technology to generate gamified feedback for more personalized, interactive and engaging fitness practice. The main goals are to stimulate people to move more and better, thus addressing the problem of inactivity and offering qualitative workouts by focusing on monitoring and analyzing training exercises.

For the rehabilitation application, the project aims to monitor patients in realistic environments. The underlying goal is to improve the transition from rehabilitation, to training and finally to full performance – making it as quick and effective as possible.

Intuitive, low-latency and suitable for many applications

Planned outcomes for the project are varied and include the development of a sensor platform that:

• is modular, and suitable for use in- and outdoors;
• drives an interactive visualization canvas of 10m2 in size.

The system will be easy to install and configure. It will feature low-delay interaction with the user and an API that enables the system’s use with gaming engines. A minimum of 10 concepts will be developed illustrating the wide range of uses of this technology along with target demographics. Two of these will be developed into proofs of concept.

360 degrees of expertise

To develop iPlay technology for these two targeted use cases, the consortium will rely on a cross-domain collaboration between experts in LED visualization, dynamic plantar pressure measurement systems, game design, training and rehabilitation ICT, sensors and user research.

“iPlay technology will rely on LED visualization, sensing and gamification to enable comprehensive, 3D monitoring of athletes’ bodies in real time. iPlay will facilitate personalized and gamified fitness experiences and drive efficient and effective rehabilitation strategies for sports professionals after injuries.”