Analog Devices has announced its collaboration with Microsoft Corp. and Hexoskin regarding a unique, wearable Internet of Things (IoT) solution for athlete and team performance management at the IoT World Forum. This IoT solution will allow 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, this 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.
Martin Cotter, vice president, IoT, Healthcare and Consumer Business Units, Analog Devices said - "We are very excited to lead this initiative, as it involves a unique set of measurement and analytical challenges that we’re uniquely positioned to solve. 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 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, this solution utilizes Hexoskin’s innovative e-textile platform, which has received strong praise and validation from the athletic and medical communities. 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. This wearable smart jersey demonstrates how Azure IoT enables advanced analysis and real-time actionable insights from individual athlete and team-level input.
This 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 and is one of the toughest environments to test the technology.
While the initial prototypes were developed for athlete management, this 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.
