New radio transmitters and receivers (transponders) will be able to help competitive skiers get feedback from their coaches.
Researchers have attached transponders to an athlete’s skis that can transmit radio waves one thousand times per second in every direction. Receiving stations placed alongside a slope in regular intervals pick up the signals and analyse the time a signal needs to travel from the antenna to a station. This technique accurately determines an antenna's position within three centimetres.
Developed by Austrian firm Abatec and tested by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF, the technique involves radio frequency identification (RFID) and a computer that calculates the position of the skis every millisecond, therefore enabling the coach to provide feedback on the skier’s performance in training.
"A coach recognises whether both skis were parallel," said explains Dr. Klaus Richter, Expert Group Manager at the IFF in Magdeburg, Germany. "Whether the skier has drifted from her path in a curve and whether she is able to carve [taking turns on the edge of the skis] properly."
Hear it
Meet a Role Model who works with radio frequency technology.
You’ve read it. Now review it.
Date Published: March 10, 2009
More by this source
|
Print
|
Send to a friend
|
Rate & Comment
|
Keep up to date
If you found this item fun or informative, please let others know. Simply send to a friend or recommend it to even more people - on any of the following sites:
Latest Science News | reddit | digg.com | del.icio.us | rollyo | stumbleupon
More on Winter sports...
Going the extra mile
Do you love sport but have no athletic talent? Go for science and technology instead.
It's time for winter sports
Get your skates on...
Where will the big bucks go when the bubble bursts?
It is an industry that has exploded in the past two decades, spawning a legion of dependent businesses, transforming the world of sport and making a few key players very rich. The transformation of the upper echelons of English football, and the "prune juice" economics that led to millions then flowing into the accounts of players and their agents, has been fuelled by television money. So too, to a lesser degree, the fortunes of other sports that have followed in its wake.
