Augmented equipment

The 94Fifty ball has been dismissed in some press as a trivial geek toy, but I think it might actually have some utility for young players trying to improve their game. The broader goal of augmenting sports to improve practice and training is something Jono Hey and I explored in our work on ping pong training.

Still, when it comes to adding sensors to sports equipment, I am more interested in improving either the game itself or fans enjoyment of the game. For example, video review during games is something that makes sense rationally but tends to slow things down and interrupt the flow of games. It would be better if the equipment itself was smart enough to detect automatically calls that currently go to review. Instrumented basketballs should be able to detect precisely when they were last touched, and with the addition of player-worn galvanic transponders, we should be able to detect right away who was the last person to touch the ball. This would eliminate all possession reviews as well as some goaltending reviews. The rest of the goaltending reviews could be cleaned up with an arc detector in the ball. Foot-behind-the-line detection (for 3 pointers and less regularly for free throws) should also be straightforward either with cameras or sensors embedded in shoes when there are visual obstructions.

Joey Crawford has his moments. But come on, nobody goes to games to see the refs. More ball less stall.

The Penny Race

I used to do a lot of trail running races. I did decently well, finishing in the top 3 in my age group a few times. During a half marathon in Marin County I crested the final hill and was about to descend through an lovely second-growth redwood and fir forest. I was again doing well enough, well inside the first ten finishers. I was exhausted and in some pain, but thought I could probably soldier to the finish and drop only a spot or two. But then I looked around; early morning fog had settled into the grove in front of me, the giant evergreens morphing into ethereal specters, a familiar but wondersome transformation I have grown accustomed to after running through hundreds of redwood groves.

And my thought was this: I am in the midst of the best place I will experience in weeks and my goal at the moment is to get through it as fast as possible?

After that I took a left turn, away from the race and along a creek, jogging slowly. I've not done a trail race since.

Perhaps we should reconsider what it means to race, to compete. Races are easy things, simple to grasp because they are so easily measured. But what if we went after a different, more complicated metric? Something like flickr's "interestingness". Perhaps Dillard puts it better:

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

The Penny Race. Teams of people bring their mobiles and set off to capture photos and videos of interesting things within a given period of time. Explore as far or as close as you wish, but return to the start by a certain time to show off your compiled multimedia document. Teams vote on a winner: the best is treated to a round of frothy ales.

At least 1 idea/day. Here we go.

I am going to try to get down one idea per day using this blog. "One idea per day" comes from the Seinfeld "don't break the chain" productivity approach.

In the spirit of this effort, the first idea is a blog extension that automatically creates a "chain" visualization. There exist many apps for creating such a calendar generically, but it is always better to have the visualization grow automatically if possible. This could be useful for any event that can be sensed. Apple Watch does something similar with "Activity history", showing a calendar of activity events.

What if you could just attach a sensor to something that you wanted to make sure you did everyday? Let's say I want to learn an instrument. I attach a small sensor to it that is tuned to detect when it is played. I use a mobile app to set my goal every day for a particular sensor (e.g., "play for 20 minutes") then attach it. This would automatically create a "chain" for me on the app.

The problem is, of course, that practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. So how can you tell if you're doing well? Perhaps the sensor has a mic that pics up audio and has some basic analysis abilities to detect quality. If those don't work well enough, clips could be fired off to experts (that is, crowdsource the problem).

Could such a basic sensor be used to track other things in this way? Attach a motion sensor to a bike, to shoes, hats, etc. In this way you could solve the problem with many activity trackers: they fail to track anything that doesn't look like a step. Just attach a sensor button to things (your swim trunks, kayak paddle, etc.) and you'll get at least some data for every activity.