Sudden Impact Wearables Design Challenge Competitors

As someone who attends a public school, there are teams composed of all ages for many sports. After consulting with my school's Physical Education department, I have decided to cover Field Hockey.

Designing of low cost and battery powered wearable sensor module to stream and monitor, vital body parameters of sport person on Android/IoS Smartphone and MacOS/Windows/Linux PC using WiFi or on MacOS/Windows/Linux PC using long range Sub GHz transceiver at monitoring station.

Runners have some exciting smart watches, cyclist have computer providing their vital parameters. So, the big question is why this sort of things are not available to sports person. So, here I propose a device which will be remotely monitoring sports performance whether it is football or skiing or any other sports.

I have had a number of friends sustain serious injuries while playing high school and other youth sports, so this challenge is very relatable to me. Concussions are very serious injuries and must be treated as such, but they are not always noticeable, and some players continue to play after sustaining a concussion or other serious injury. The obvious solution is that provided in the premise of this challenge, to create a system of notification so that a coach could see real time data regarding the forces and hits that players are subjected to, as well as other vital signs to make sure that the players playing are healthy enough to play.

My focus will be mainly on the sectors those I have experience to deal with before, like ECG, SPO2, Impedance measurement and EMG. But as well as these, I would like to work on a few other options which may need some basic research works too, like respiratory rate and hydration.

My project will be made of two types of units, as described below:

1. One centralized receiver unit for coach/supervisor with data processing and visual display of each player’s health information and health alarms on the screen of a tablet computer or smart phone.
2. Multiple wearable health monitor units with health condition alarm for athletes/players, which transmit the data through wireless connections to the centralized receiver

My conclusion was that it might be a good idea to make a generic system that will be easy to configure for some specific application on the field instead of making it specific for some sport.

I would like to create a "smart clothes" which can log the health parameters (eg. heart rate, temperature etc) and cycling conditions (eg. acceleration, speed, profile of the trip etc.). If a bicyclist is exposed to visible by clothing, the risk of road accidents can be reduced. The bluetooth connection will be desirable to keep in touch between the dress and the person (via smart phone).

My proposal is to implement an impact monitor for skiers. Its purpose is to monitor and log the accelerations that affect the skier. When my son is on a ski run, I want to see afterwards (maybe at the end of the day) a nice graph of how much G's he had to cope with. If the acceleration exceeds a certain threshold, I want to get an instant notification on my phone (as long as I'm in range).  The device should be mounted to the ski helmet. It must be small enough not to disturb normal handling, and it also must not affect the helmet in case of an accident.

I realized that we wear heart monitors while working out but then do not use them during sporting events.  I also realized that sports teams would spring for these items as it would give them a competitive advantage knowing how fast the players were wearing out.

I would like to split the project into 2 separate systems, 1 to monitor events that might cause mild traumatic brain injuries and one to monitor physiological stress. The reasons for the split are that the sensors need to be in very different places on the body and the function is completely different. It is also highly undesirable to have wires running around the body as most people will feel this is unacceptable.