IoT Solution Gives Sports Teams a Competitive Edge

Analog Devices announced its collaboration with Microsoft Corp. and Hexoskin regarding a unique, wearable Internet of Things (IoT) solution for athlete and team performance management. The IoT solution allows coaches and team staff to monitor player information such as motion, heart rate, and other useful health and performance metrics from sensor-equipped vests worn by players. This information, combined with player location and environmental data, is sent to a secure cloud-based analytics platform providing critical insights back to team staff via a dashboard. By informing better player interventions and improving game-time tactical decisions, the IoT solution helps provide significant competitive advantage to teams. In addition, it is designed to enable better overall management of player health, recovery, and injury avoidance, extending the benefits far beyond an individual game. The new IoT solution, including the vest and cloud platform, will be demonstrated in Analog Devices’ Booth 206 at IoT World Forum in Santa Clara, May 10-12, 2016.

“Analog Devices is very excited to lead this initiative, as it involves a unique set of measurement and analytical challenges that we’re uniquely positioned to solve,” said Martin Cotter, vice president, IoT, Healthcare and Consumer Business Units, Analog Devices. “Some of the performance indicators we’re interested in are not yet fully understood and can’t be measured directly. So, we’re leveraging our precision sensing and algorithm capabilities, as well as our deep expertise in biomedical applications to think differently about the challenge and develop a unique solution. We’re thrilled to be working on this challenge along with Microsoft and Hexoskin, without whom a complete deployable solution would not be possible.”

Complementing Analog Devices’ sensing and measurement expertise, the solution utilizes Hexoskin’s innovative e-textile platform, which has received strong praise and validation from the athletic and medical communities. “Sports organizations are looking for integrated data analytics solutions,” said Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, CEO, Hexoskin.  “At Hexoskin, we’ve always pushed for compatibility and integration. This project with Analog Devices and Microsoft is a good example of that openness philosophy.”

The Microsoft Azure IoT technology helps to solve analysis and user-experience challenges with a cloud-based analytics engine as well as the user dashboard application. “Helping our customers quickly and easily innovate with IoT is core to our Microsoft Azure IoT offerings,” said Jerry Lee, Microsoft Director of Product Marketing, Azure IoT. “This wearable smart jersey demonstrates how Azure IoT enables advanced analysis and real-time actionable insights from individual athlete and team-level input.”

The IoT solution is currently being implemented and tested in collaboration with one of Ireland’s most prominent hurling clubs. “It’s an extremely tough and demanding team sport, with athletes at the pinnacle of performance,” said Cotter. “We felt this was one of the toughest environments in which to test the technology.”

While the initial prototypes were developed for athlete management, the technology has implications across numerous team-based settings (e.g. emergency services first-responders) where performance, health and safety, and tactical decision-making are critical to enable a successful outcome.