Sports Instruments for Boosting the Active Lifestyle Eero Punkka 8'5'2006

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Sports Instruments for Boosting the Active
LifestyleEero Punkka 8.5.2006
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Contents

• 1. Short introduction to Suunto
• 2. Electronics in sports equipment
• 3. Competing for wrist-space
• 4. Sports Systems

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Who?Eero Punkka Some professional background

• Doctor of Technology in Applied Physics 1992
• Technology Director at Suunto responsible for
  product concepts, technologies and product
  platforms
• Over 20 years of hands-on experience on research
  and development in various innovation
  environments
• Helsinki University of Technology (TKK)
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• State Research Centre of Finland (VTT)
• Neste Oy
• Vaisala Technologies (now VTI Technologies)
• Suunto Oy

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AMER SPORTS Largest Sports Equipment Company in
the World
HQ Helsinki, Finland
New 2005!
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Specialist
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Suunto is the leading manufacturer of sports
instruments for a variety of sports, including
skiing, fitness, hiking, diving, sailing and
golf.
Who is Suunto?
Our strategy is to focus on sports activities
where advanced measurement technology, data
processing and specific algorithms can create
significant benefits for active participants
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Its all about making measurements
Year
2000
1936
1970
1980
1990
Analog Compassing
Analog Water Pressure
Electronic Water Pressure
Electronic Compassing
Acceleration
Rotation
Barometric Pressure
Analog tilt
Position
Temperature
Impact
Heart Rate
Orientation
Speed
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Software Engineering
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Tight and Seamless Integration of

• Industrial design
• Easy user-interface
• Mechanics
• Electronics
• Microsensors
• Software
• Mathematical Algorithms

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Electronics in Sports Equipment
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Intelligent functionality (Head Flexpoint)
Electronics is not always needed to induce
intelligence in sports
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Intellifibre dynamic ski/racket torsion control
(Head)
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Electronic binding management (Atomic)
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Intelligent cushioning shoe (Adidas)
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Electronic casting reel (Shimano)
Eliminates reel backslash Self-energizing - no
battery!
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Swing analysis vest (Bentley-Kinetics)
Swing analysis club(Smartswing)
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Example of an algorithm-intensive Sports
Instrument Suunto G6

• Measure on the wrist
• Tempo time from take off to impact (Example
  1.24 seconds)
• Rhythm ratio of downswing compared to tempo
  (24.6 )
• Backswing Length angle between take off and
  highest point of your wrist (175º)
• Speed estimated club head speed (104 mph/ 167
  km/h)
• Test the consistency (10 shots)
• Consistency range 0 100
• Lower index less variation better accuracy

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Accuracy of measured Tempo
2003 Video-Analysis of 1000 swings
2004 500 swings
2005 100 Test people around the world
Early Prototype 2002
tempo
Measured by Suunto G6 High-speed Video
cameraCompetitiorPC based LCD Speed
sensor(approx. 3000,-)
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Conclusions on current trends in sports equipment
electronics

• Big brands using electronic sports gear as
  show-off items
• Performance enhancement usually the marketing
  promise
• Real user benefits lack in most cases
• High prices a major barrier in consumer
  acceptance
• Patent jungle slows down the progress

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Competing for wrist-space
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Watch categories

• mostly electrical modern fashionable colors
  and plastics
• fashion even several bought watches yearly
• Swatch as originator
• cheaper brands (20 200 )
• analog or digital
• mostly mechanical and steel ETA, Citizen, Seiko
  
• lower and upper middle price category (150 3
  000 )
• bought once in three to ten years
• on going mechanical renaissance
• reissues, chronographs, diving
• upper middle class to high end traditional
  mechanical
• bought once in a lifetime (3 000 500 000 )
• complications, precious metals or jewels
• now for women, too

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Wrist-wearable technology innovations 1970-2005

• pager
• calculator
• phone number memo
• dictaphone
• radio
• TV
• mp3-player
• USB-memory
• games
• lottery number generator
• interpreter
• dictionary
• metronome, musical instrument tuner
• pedometer
• camera
• GPS
• phone

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Wristops around the world...
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Wrist-wearable success stories (in addition to
watches)

• Heart rate monitor 1979
• Diving computer 1983 (1997)
• Outdoor computer 1997
• Next success story GPS, phone, ...?

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Sports Systems
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Sports system approach
TELEVISION
INTERNET
SPORTS USER-INTERFACE DEVICE
PC, LAPTOP, PDA, PHONE
SPORTS VENUE
TRANSFERABLE MEASUREMENT INFRASTRUCTURE
MEASUREMENT MODULES IN SPORTS EQUIPMENT,CLOTHING,
BODY
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GPS heart rate cadence (Garmin)
Speed/distance heart rate (Polar)
MP3 speed/distance (Philips/Nike)
GPS heart rate (Timex)
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Ball/player position measurement system (Cairos
AG)
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Example of a distributed sensor system SUUNTO t6
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PC 7 BODY FUNCTIONS
Heart rate EPOC Resp. rate Ventilation VO2 Energy
consumption Training effect
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EPOC EXAMPLE
At higher intensity the EPOC value accumulates
faster.
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ENSURE OPTIMAL TRAINING
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Conclusions

• Electronics has still penetrated sports only in a
  limited magnitude and in niche areas
• The most successful sports electronic
  applications have been in wrist-wearable form
• Sports systems development going on with wireless
  connections to measurement modules in clothing,
  sports equipment and body
• The most beneficial current applications are
  based on motion and physiology measurements

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Thats all folks...