Middleware for ubiquitous computing in the sports domain.

Key Words: Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive Computing, Augmented Artefacts, Computer Augmented Sports, Middleware, Pervasive Healthcare.

Ubiquitous computing, as envisaged by Weiser, involves the seamless integration of computing ability in the environment in which we live. With the advent of smaller high capacity computing, the potential for ubiquitous computing integration in sport has become apparent. There are numerous reasons why it is desirable to augment various sports with computational ability. These include encouraging participation in physical activity, facilitating training-based improvements in skills and performance via feedback, enhancing the experience of the spectator, reducing the rate and extent of injury and enabling better refereeing. The paradigm of ubiquitous computing is a natural starting point for computational augmentation of the sporting world. The technology should interfere minimally in both the training and competition environment, which is essential in allowing natural movements to emerge.

Despite the advantages of augmenting sports relatively few such augmented sports systems exist. One of the main reasons for this is the complexity of creating applications in the sports domain. Application developers must deal with heterogeneous hardware platforms and a wide variety of sensors and actuators. They must also deal with the added complexity of programming and performing analysis in a 3-dimensional environment. Most applications also have additional non-functional requirements such as privacy, security fault-tolerance and real time constraints. We propose to ease this burden on the application developer by providing a Middleware for augmented sports artefacts.

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http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/~reillyse
http://www.cs.tcd.ie/~reillyse

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