Racing Telemetry to Reach New Heights
Sports telemetry is everywhere…heart-rate monitors, power meters, and even Nike sneakers. While it’s given athletes more insight than ever before into what’s going on internally, it rarely offers predictive insight, and to the best of our knowledge has not been able to make decisions that maximize the productivity of a group – say…a cycling team. In the coming year, Dr Martin Becker of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, hopes to change that with the introduction of a computer based system that will continuously monitor riders, and allow them to identify the early signs of fatigue by tracking a rider’s speed, cadence, heart-rate, and power-output. Changes in these parameters, like a rising pulse combined with slowing cadence, could signal rising lactic acid levels in a lead rider’s muscles. In such a situation, Dr. Becker says the system would move the lead rider to a less strenuous position in the pack until he had recovered. As planned the system will be able to track more than ten riders simultaneously, and adapt to changing conditions like a team that is divided into two groups – a situation that would require separate analysis for each pack. Dr. Becker says his system has already shown promising results with students in the lab, and that testing will move outdoors in the next several months. He also says the system is scheduled for some pro-rider testing some time early next year.
