Case study

Using of wearable devices to capture performance in sports is mainstream trend in the last couple of years. Common for all sports wearable tech is ability to capture typical body / limbs motion gestures and to detect their specific force. Battery life is a serious constraint, so algorithms have to deal with the trade off between precision and processing power. Data is transferred to app via Bluetooth low-energy (BLE).

The tennis swing analyzer is one example of sports wearable tech designs. Wearable device collects relevant data about the tennis player performance during the match and synchronizes with the app using BLE.

Solution

Bitgear’s solutions for wearable devices in sport are based on low-cost MEMS sensors including two range accelerometers, gyroscope and magnetometer. Using “Wearable tech reference design” is a great starting point, both as a development tool for low power algorithms and as a hardware reference for product design.

Two accelerometers are used, high-G for precisely determining force vector applied to the ball, and low-G which is combined with gyroscope and magnetometer to determine hand motion trajectory.

In the case of tennis, the device firmware is capable to classify forehand (topspin, flat and slice), backhand (topspin, flat and slice), smash and service swings.

Added Value

• Testing and customization of “Wearable tech reference design”
• Development of motion sensing and qualification algorithms
• Low-power electronics design
• Embedded software with BT synchornization