Hasta La Gadget!

A professor of computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon is combining her mutual love of football and wireless technologies in a project that could lead to a sucker-free future devoid of referrees and missed calls.

Dr. Priya Narasimhan is embedding GPS and accelerometer systems in footballs and gloves in order to improve the accuracy of officiating. If she succeeds in her goal of ultimately placing the tech into the ranks of pro football, it’s going to be that much harder to blame the ref for a blown call.

But it might finally lead to accurate play-tracking down to millimeters. Some of the applications of the remote sensors include measurements of real-time ball handling grips, detailed ball trajectories, and its speed and relative position on the field. This could also help teams determine which players are better at safely cradling the ball during a run.

According to Dr. Narasimham, the technology is still in its nascent stages. However, the balls already have the technology to able to determine time of posession and automatic first down markers (the dudes who carry the chains should start filling out their resume right about now.)

The special gloves are embedded with 15 wireless touch sensors throughout the fingers and the palm and run up to a wireless pod on the back of the arm. They measure which parts of the glove are touching the ball at all times and this can help measure the correct hand positioning of a player when receiving a ball.

As for the footballs, they were opened up to place a GPS chip and an accelerometer inside and then were filled with upholstery foam for cushioning. The current chip sends the tracking data once per second and is accurate up to 30 feet.

For the next iteration of the project, Prof. Narasimhan and her team
are working on a new embedded chip that sends information four times a
second and will make the GPS more accurate by placing permanent
receivers near the field to determine its position.

One of the doctoral students working on the project envisions the
data being displayed on football broadcasts with the same type of
liberty as defense line formations are now. While knowing the minute
technical hand position of each player might appear like it would be
too revealing (or unnecessary), it’s good to remember that a lot of the
analysis and visual examples now used by broadcasts and video games
used to be regarded as either taboo (too much information for the other
team to exploit) or ‘too inside’ to be appealing.

But in the last 15 years, pro football has quickly adopted growing
technologies for the benefit of the game, such as projected first down
lines, instant replay, and radio helmets. So it is likely something
like this will eventually make its way to the game. It’s just too bad
they can’t institute this tech in time for this year’s NFL playoffs.

Photo: Andrew Rush/CMU