A system that wirelessly integrates actual sports equipment with a computer and the internet to allow players remotely located from one another to play a competitive simulated sports game. An individual player may opt to play solo or practice to improve basic techniques. The system includes motion sensors connected to the player and a motion sensing device, all containing circuits and contact or motion sensors coupled with signal processing and radio frequency transmitter circuitry, thereby wirelessly communicate game performance information to a remote receiver-computer. The computer displays player information and visually simulates and controls a game between two players via the internet, having similar equipment and remotely located from each other. Standard sports equipment may be retrofitted with the sensors and associated circuitry to convert such equipment into “smart equipment” for use with the system. The system employs specially developed computer software to process player performance data, control game play, communicate game information between players, generate and control visual simulations and display player performance information.

A portable electronic device is disclosed. The portable electronic device comprises memory for storing instructions that are executed by a processor to perform the operations of analyzing data with the portable electronic device related to the position and motion of a putter at least one of before, during and after at least one putting stroke performed with the putter. The portable electronic device analyzes the data by utilizing a plurality of sensors within the portable electronic device including accelerometers configured to measure accelerations and gyroscopes to identify an angle of the putter during the at least one putting stroke. The portable electronic device is attached to the putter. A putting stroke characteristic can be determined based on the data generated from the sensors of the portable electronic device.

A golf ball launch monitor is disclosed that may be used with an alignment stick. The monitor has a default alignment and an image sensor adapted to capture an image of the alignment stick and communicate that image to a processor. The processor is configured to perform the following steps: (a) detect a horizontal edge within the image representative of the alignment stick by detecting large contrast changes; (b) convert each edge to a vector that starts at the sensor's focal point and projects into space based on the sensor's calibration; (c) locate the plane formed by the vectors by applying standard outlier removal and best fit analysis (d) determine the intersection of the plane and an earth tangential plane; and (e) calculate an azimuth alignment angle offset based on the line and the monitor's default alignment. The calculated azimuth alignment angle can then be used to adjust ball flight trajectory calculations.

The present application relates to a mark ball special for a golf high-speed camera sensor. The mark ball includes a sphere. A mark portion is provided on a surface of the sphere, the mark portion includes a plurality of marks that are arranged along a circumferential direction of the sphere and shaped different from each other. A plurality of different marks are arranged on a golf mark ball such that a high-speed camera sensor can capture diversified images of the ball.

Systems, apparatus, and methods for using mobile sporting goods. In one aspect, the system permits a sporting enthusiast to track the location of a mobile sporting good, such as a golf ball, relative to a target, such as a target on a driving range, and correlate that location to a simulated location on a simulated golf hole.

A system and method for analyzing and improving the performance of a body motion of an animal or human subject requires instrumenting a subject with inertial sensors, monitoring a body motion of interest, converting sensor data into motion data and animation, comparing the motion data with existing data for motion related performance parameters, providing a real-time, information rich, animation and data display of the results in color coded displays; and based on the results prescribing a training regime with exercises selected from a library of standardized exercises using standardized tools and training aids.

Disclosed are a device for calculating flight information of a ball and a method of calculating flight information of a ball that are capable of rapidly calculating the motion parameters of a ball and a golf club using an infrared sensing type device or a camera sensing type device and very rapidly calculating spin information of the ball corresponding to the calculated motion parameters with high accuracy through a simple calculation with reference to database type information about the calculated motion parameters, and a computing-device-readable recording medium having the method recorded therein.

A spectator system and method that displays different views of an event, such as a sporting event, and in particular uses a position selected by the spectator to assist in displaying a view from the selected position. The spectator, using an internet device can zoom, pan, tilt and change the view, as well as change the view to another position, such as a finish line, goal, or a participant position (e.g. Driver of car #3 or Tiger Wood's position). The starting viewing position can be specified, as well as the target position or orientation from the starting viewing position. Vital information on the sporting event or a participant can be appended to the view. In some forms, artificial reality or any geographic referenced datasets can be used and combined, such as 3D imagery or 3D renderings, to enhance the experience.

The present invention is not a method of directly calculating the rotational characteristics of a ball through frequency analysis of a received signal as in the prior arts, but a method of determining a final spin information by finding the spin information of the moving ball while approaching a ball trajectory predicted in terms of the trajectory of a moving ball using the position coordinate data of the ball to the trend data indicating the trend of the position coordinates of the moving ball. The present invention provides a method of finding the spin in terms of the trajectory of the moving ball, regardless of whether it is possible to check the frequency characteristics of the rotation of the ball from the signal reflected from the moving ball, and thus derives a fairly accurate and uniform spin calculation result.

A golf launch monitor is configured to determine a flight characteristic of a golf ball. The golf launch monitor includes two low-speed cameras, a trigger device, and a processor. The trigger device is configured to detect a golf swing. The processor is configured to instruct, upon the trigger device detecting said golf swing, the first camera to capture the first ball image; instruct the second camera to capture the second ball image after a time interval, wherein the time interval is less than the first frame rate and the second frame rate; and determine, based at least in part on the first ball image and the second ball image, the flight characteristic of the golf ball.