Open SESAME!

These magical words won't take you to a cave of treasures, but they do lead us to some exciting applications for wireless sensor networks that open up a treasure trove of information previously inaccessible. SESAME: SEnsing for Sport and Managed Exercise has a vision in which athletes and coaches are continuously provided with precise and relevant information about their performance, their body state and posture, presented in a form determined by sport-specific training requirements based on a careful analysis of coaching methods and coaches’ informational needs. To realize this, athletes wear an easily-extensible range of different sensors that capture accurate information about their position, skeletal posture, muscular response, and physiology in a way that is non-intrusive and capable of working in the context in which the athlete normally performs. This setup is engineered so as not to cause injury, discomfort or performance degradation and it must not interfere with aerodynamics. Wearable sensors are complemented by track-side monitors and video capture equipment and by an integrated hardware/software/network platform designed to enable substantial volumes of data to be gathered, recorded, analyzed and presented to athletes and coaches in the most accessible and useful form. The main objective of the SESAME project is to conduct high-quality scientific research to produce deployable systems that have a positive and measurable impact on the training of elite athletes.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have just released an open source low power 802.11 sensor board tailored for Crossbow's Imote2 platform. The SESAME consortium is a multidisciplinary group consisting of 6 partners with University of Cambridge Engineering Department as a member. The sensor board developed is designed to support the high data rate requirements of the sports sensing application. The UCAM-WSB100 is a low power wireless sensor daughter board for the Imote2 platform designed to facilitate high data-rate wireless sensor applications. Developed to support the SESAME project, the board will be used to collect real-time and off-line processing and feedback in enhancing the performance of elite athletes. 

Overview of the UCAM-WSB100 sensor board:
* Compatible with the Imote2 processor board
* Low Power 802.11 b/g based on Marvell 88W8686 chipset
* Supports ad-hoc and infrastructure modes
* Access to power control of the radio system
* 12 analog channels (12-bits resolution)
* Physical dimensions: 48mm x 36mm
* Linux driver support via libertas drivers in mainline kernel

 

The information obtained from the sensors will be pre-processed on the athlete to take account of the measurements required and the prevailing network conditions. The data is then transmitted wirelessly to a base-station and application platform. Here, the data will be further fused and processed in a way that is informed by an understanding of biomechanical models of athletes; an understanding of the consequences of sensor placement error and physical properties of the method of attachment; and the coaching objective for which the data are being captured. Within SESAME, the primary experimental focus will be on sprinting, for which precise technique is hugely important and mechanical constraints on performance are well understood. Consequently, the derived data will include the position, velocity, acceleration and orientation of the athlete, their stride length and rate, body posture and instantaneous pressure in the shoes, as well as physiological data such as heart rate and blood oxygen level. The data will then be output in three different ways: they will be sent for long term storage and offline analysis; they will be presented visually to the coaches in a way that is meaningful to them; and they will be returned directly to the athlete in real time as biofeedback.

The UCAM-WSB100 is created as an open source platform. As part of the effort to develop open source hardware for use in conjunction with Crossbow's Imote2, the details of the hardware reference design (schematics, board layout diagrams) are available to the wireless sensor network community. Users will be able to easily tailor the system to their particular application. Researchers at the University of Cambridge are seeking volunteers to help improve the hardware reference design and add support for this board in other operating systems such as TinyOS and .Net. If interested in participating in this development, click here and for more information on this project, click here.