Position Reckoning System Utilizing a Sports Ball

Abstract

A sports ball position reckoning system, comprising instrumentation in a sports ball that allows one or more players to be electronically located on a playing field or court each time a goal attempt is made. The instrumentation is configured to fit through the opening of an inflation port of the ball when the fill valve is removed. The system works in conjunction with a performance monitor system that detects ball interactions with a goal and is used to trigger the system to analyze the ball flight path just prior to the goal interaction. Player position is ascertained through the localization of the initial position of the ball's flight path. For multiple players, each player is pre-assigned a uniquely marked ball. The identity of the player who executed the attempt is determined through the player's association with the ball that executed the flight path towards the goal.

Claims

1. A shooter localization system comprising: at least one shooter on a court; at least one ball whose position may be measured by a ball localization system; at least one goal; at least one performance monitoring system that measures interactions of said at least one ball and said at least one goal; at least one ball localization system that measures the position of said at least one ball relative to the location of at least one of said at least one goal; a remote computational system that receives data from both said at least one performance monitoring system and said at least one ball localization system; and a triggering event comprising a signal from said at least one performance monitoring system, wherein said triggering event indicates the time at which a ball/goal interaction, was detected; wherein said triggering event is used by said remote computational system to select the subset of said data collected from said at least one ball localization system that was obtained just prior to said triggering event and use said data subset for calculations.

2. The shooter localization system according to claim 1, wherein said calculations include the location of one of said shooters just prior to releasing one of said balls for a shot.

3. The shooter localization system according to claim 1, wherein said calculations include the trajectory of one of said balls proximate one of said goals.

4. The shooter localization system according to claim 1, wherein each of said at least one ball has a unique identifying mark on an exterior that allows said at least one shooter to identify said at least one ball and that may be associated with a unique identification code that may be transmitted to said at least one ball localization system.

5. The shooter localization system according to claim 4, wherein said unique identifying mark is a color.

6. The shooter localization system according to claim 4, wherein said unique identifying mark is one or more alphanumeric characters.

7. The shooter localization system according to claim 1, wherein said subset of said data comprises 3D locations that closely fit a ballistic curve.

8. The shooter localization system according to claim 1, wherein said subset of said data is comprises locations whose projection onto a horizontal plane closely fit a straight line and whose velocity is relatively constant.

9. A method for determining both the identity and position of at least one shooter on a court, wherein the method comprises: a. measuring a position of at least one ball relative to a goal on said court by use of a ball localization system, whose identity may be electronically determined by said ball localization system, and which has a unique human-readable identifying mark on an exterior of said ball that allows each of said balls to be identified by said at least one shooter as unique as compared to each of other said balls; b. associating each of said at least one shooter with one of said balls; c. using a triggering event comprising a signal from at least one performance monitoring system, wherein said triggering event indicates the time at which a ball/goal interaction was detected; d. measuring a sequential series of locations of one of said balls by said ball localization system whose measured location just prior to said triggering event is proximate said goal; e. determining the identity of one of said balls by said ball localization system whose measured location just prior to said triggering event is proximate said goal; f. calculating the coordinates of a first location from said series of locations in step d; g. assigning a position of said each associated shooter based on said coordinates.

10. The method in claim 9 for determining both the identity and position of at least one shooter on a court or field of play, wherein said assigned position of said each associated shooter is used to calculate goal and miss statistics from multiple shots at said assigned position.

11. A method of tracking at least one shooting position relative to a goal on a court for a plurality of players comprising: a. associating each of said plurality of players to a one of a plurality of balls that has both an electronic identity readable by a ball localization system and a human-readable identity on the exterior of the ball; b. measuring both a location and an identity of each of said plurality of balls using a ball localization system; c. exclusively using each of said balls by said associated player throughout a practice session; and d. assigning a position each of said plurality of players from calculations based on said measured associated ball locations and identities.

12. The method of tracking according to claim 11, wherein said calculations in step d include: h. using a triggering event comprising a signal from at least one performance monitoring system, wherein said triggering event indicates the time at which a ball interaction, goal or miss was detected; i. measuring a sequential series of locations of one of said plurality of balls by said ball localization system whose measured location just prior to said triggering event is proximate said goal; j. determining the identity of one of said balls whose measured location just prior to said triggering event is proximate said goal; k. calculating the coordinates of a first location from said series of locations; and l. calculating a position of said each associated player based on said coordinates.

13. An electronic system comprising a low profile, said low profile configured to fit through an opening in an inflatable ball when the ball's fill valve has been removed and said electronic system configured for wireless communication with a remote computational system.

14. The electronic system according to claim 13, further comprising: a. an energy storage system; b. an RF transponder; c. a motion detection system; and d. an inflation fill valve.

15. The electronic system according to claim 14, further comprising: an energy harvesting system configured to charge said energy storage system.

16. The electronic system according to claim 15, wherein said energy harvesting system also serves as said motion detection system.

17. The electronic system according to claim 13, wherein the weight of the electronic system is counterbalanced by the addition of a curable liquid inside of said inflatable ball.

18. A method for instrumenting an inflatable ball comprising: a. removing an inflation valve from the ball; b. inserting at least one of an electronic system and an RF-reflective material, said electronic system comprising: an energy storage system; an RF transponder; a motion detection system; and an inflation fill valve.

19. The method for instrumenting an inflatable ball according to claim 18, wherein an additional step of counterbalancing the weight of said electronic system by adding a curable liquid inside of said inflatable ball follows step a and precedes step b.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0015] FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of an exemplary performance monitoring and ball location reckoning system with a plurality of players and balls on a half basketball court.

[0016] FIG. 2 shows a cross section of an exemplary construction of a portion of a sports ball in the vicinity of the inflation valve.

[0017] FIG. 3 shows a cross section of an exemplary embodiment of a low-profile electronics package that fits through the valve hole in a sports ball.

[0018] FIG. 4 shows a cross section of an exemplary embodiment of a low-profile electronics package fitted in the valve hole in a sports ball with an inflation needle inserted.

[0019] FIG. 5 shows the combined exterior and cross section of a sports ball fitted with an exemplary embodiment of a low-profile electronics package.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0020] Many sports balls are air-inflatable and constructed with multiple layers. Generally, these balls consist of an outside layer 3 that is designed to directly interact with a player and promote good grip, bounce, spin, wear, etc. There is also typically an impenetrable inside layer which serves as the bladder 2 for containing the pressurized air. There may optionally be additional layers to increase strength, stiffness, etc. of the inflated ball.

[0021] The bladders 2 of inflatable sports balls 1 typically have a thicker valve retention section 4 that is shaped to capture a valve 7, which is used for inflating and deflating the ball with the insertion of a needle 20 through a hole 8 in the valve 7. Valves 7 in sports balls 1 fail fairly frequently and may create a “leaky” ball that loses pressure; thus, standard valves 7 are used throughout the industry and replacement valves are readily available (Tachikara USA, Inc., Sparks, Nev., USA). The standard valve 7 is comprised of a top portion that includes a hole 8 for insertion of an inflation needle 20, a disc-shaped center portion that both seals the interface between the valve 7 and bladder 2 so air will not escape and locates the valve 7 in the valve retention section 4 and a cylindrical bottom section with a hemispherical end, which closes and seals itself after an inflation needle 20 is removed.

[0022] In one embodiment of the current invention, a low-profile electronics package 5 is attached to a valve 7 and inserted into the valve retention section 4 of a ball 1. The recent advent of miniaturized electronics and RF components have enabled this “aftermarket” instrumentation of a ball, wherein the old valve is removed from any inflatable ball that utilizes a standard valve and then replaced with the new valve that incorporates the low-profile electronics package 5 or reflective system. Other prior-art descriptions of instrumented balls require that balls be manufactured with instrumentation within the bladder 2 and do not contemplate instrumentation insertion into a conventional ball. By combining the universality of standard valve design in inflatable balls throughout the industry with the miniaturization of an RF tag and other electronic components, the present invention is unique as it may be used in almost any inflatable sports ball that has ever been manufactured. Thus, players that have a strong preference for a particular brand, model or individual ball may still get the benefits of an instrumented ball. An additional advantage to the low-profile package is that the system may be disassembled and reassembled in order to change batteries. Thus, the life of the product may be much longer than a system that has permanently sealed batteries inside the inflation bladder.

[0023] In one embodiment of the current invention, the electronics package 5 is comprised of a tube 10 which encases the electronics and is attached to the cylindrical bottom section of the valve 7. It should be understood that although the vessel that encases the electronics is referred to herein as a tube, it may be a vessel of any shape, material and size as long as it will fit thought the valve retention section 4 and attach to the valve 7. If a potting compound 18 is used to encase the electronics, the tube not be necessary if the potting compound attaches directly to the valve 7. Within the tube 10, there is an empty channel 11 to accept the needle valve 20 and allow air coming through the needle valve outlet ports 21 to escape through a hole 12 into the bladder interior, a circuit board 14 (which may be rigid or flexible), one or more batteries 13, generators or supercapacitors, various electronic components 16 and an RF chip antenna 17 (such as model number AH-086M555003 from Taiyo Yuden Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) to transmit and receive RF signals. One or more contact buses 15 that connect multiple batteries to one another may also be present. The entire tube and electronics assembly may be optionally potted with a potting compound 18 to create a solid package that is more resilient to the high accelerations and jerks that are inherent in the use of a sports ball 1.

[0024] In another embodiment, the ball may be made more reflected to RF transmission by placing a coating or material layer within the ball on the interior of the bladder 2, interior or exterior of the outer layer 3 or between other layers of the ball. Such coating or layer may be comprised of metal powders or other materials that can enhance RF signal reflectivity.

[0025] In order to instrument a conventional ball with the electronics package 5 or a foldable, corner-cube RF reflector, the entire package 5 must fit through the valve opening in the valve retention section 4. Similarly a reflective coating spray head must fit through such opening in order to apply the coating to the inside surface of the bladder 2. Optionally, the opening may be temporarily expanded by using a retractor, similar to a Kolbel retractor (Becton, Dickinson and Company, Franklin Lakes, N.J.) used by surgeons or other similar device for expanding an opening. A typical valve opening is about 6.5 mm in diameter, which may be expanded through stretching an oval to about 12 mm. In addition to the RF chip antenna 17, the electronics package 5 has a number of electronics components 16. These may include some or all of the following as well as various other components not listed: a microprocessor or microcontroller, an RF signal generating chip (such as the Decawave DW1000—Dublin, Ireland), an accelerometer, a vibration switch, a tilt switch, an altimeter, a digital compass, voltage regulation, clock signal generation, energy harvesting components, supercapacitors and batteries 13. All of these components are available in packages that are 6 mm or less in width. So called coin cell batteries are available in a wide variety of sizes, several of which are small enough to fit through the valve opening including the SR64, which is 5.8 mm in diameter and the SR66 which is 6.8 mm in diameter. A variety of other batteries may also be appropriate. Each coin cell is typically about 1.5 volts, so two in series are necessary to supply the voltage for 3 volt DC electronics. Additional batteries in parallel may be added to extend battery life of the system. One configuration of three parallel sets of battery pairs 13 is shown in FIG. 3 where one end of the batteries 13 is in contact with two different conductors (anode and cathode) on the circuit board 14 and a metal contact strip 15 is used to tie together the other ends of the batteries 13. Other configurations where the axes of the coin cells 13 are collinear are also possible.

[0026] Because RF transmissions and receptions are only required when the basketball is in use and actively moving, bouncing, spinning, etc., it is possible to use an energy harvesting system in lieu of or in combination with a conventional battery. Energy harvesting systems have commonly been used in “shake” flashlights (for example model DA84170 form Klenck Tools, Canton, Ohio), as well as a number of wireless devices. In these systems, some form of electricity generation (from changing magnetic fields across a conductive coil, piezo crystal strain, etc.) is used to charge an energy storage system (battery or capacitor) for later use. Dribbling, tossing, catching, shooting and bouncing a ball off a goal or backboard can all create sufficient acceleration within the ball to allow an energy harvesting system to charge an energy storage system (capacitor or a rechargeable battery). When no motion is sensed by the motion detection system within the ball after some period of time, the electronics may be put to sleep to conserve power and the frequency of RF transmissions may be curtailed or stopped. When motion is once again detected by the motion detection system, RF transmissions can be re-initiated and if energy harvesting is being used, power may once again be generated from the motion. The energy harvesting system may also be used to detect motion without the use of a separate motion detection system by detecting when it is generating power.

[0027] If the location of the center of mass of the entire electronics package 5 does not correspond to the center of mass of the uninstrumented ball 1, the ball will be out of balance. In other words, the total center of mass will not be coincident with the center of the spherical ball shape and the ball will spin with a wobble when tossed. To correct this and balance the ball 1, material 6 may be added inside the bladder at a location that is opposite the valve 7. This may be accomplished by either gluing a solid object to the bladder 2 or by injecting a curable liquid material through the valve hole and letting it cure on the side of the bladder that is opposite the valve 7. The material may also be comprised of metal powders or other materials to enhance RF signal reflectivity. To balance the ball, the mass of the material 6 added should equal the mass of the electronics package times the ratio of the distance from the ball center to the electronics package 5 center of mass and the distance from the ball center to the added material 6 center of mass.

[0028] In order for players to readily identify one instrumented ball from another, an easily identifiable, unique mark 9 such as alphanumeric characters, graphical symbols, moniker, textures, or color badges may be added to the ball's exterior. In a preferred embodiment, each ball 1 used on the same court would have a different color badge 9 attached to its exterior. When the instrumented valve assembly 5 is assembled to the ball 1, the unique code it transmits through RF to identify itself is known and correlated to the unique exterior mark 9 on the ball. Thus, during use, a remote computational system 30 will know that the say blue-marked ball transmits through RF a particular identification code that is different from say the yellow-marked (or any other) ball.

[0029] When used during a shooting practice session, where say three players are shooting at a single goal, each player's performance may be individually tracked and recorded. At the beginning of the session, the players must agree on ball assignments and communicate those to the remote computational system 30. For example, player 1 uses the blue-marked ball, player 2 uses the yellow-marked ball and player 3 uses the red-marked ball. When the system determines that a shot was taken based either from the signal form a performance monitoring system 27 or from the reckoning data from a ball 1, it can determine the identity of the ball that was shot based on the transmitted RF code of the ball most proximate the goal. If the code corresponding to say the red-marked ball was received, the system knows that the results of that shot should be attributed to player 3. Similarly, when the system determines that a shot was taken based on the transmitted RF code corresponding to say the blue-marked ball, it knows that the results of that shot should be attributed to player 1, etc. Although signals from a plurality of balls may be received during a shooting session, only the ball proximate the goal is attributed with the shot. If a plurality of balls are proximate the goal, then additional information such as the ball height above the court or the trajectory of the ball just prior to the shot being registered may give additional information as to which ball the shot should be attributed. The remote computational system 30 collects such shooting statistics for the individual players and records them in a database for later review.

[0030] To monitor the position of one or more balls 1 on a court, the court is instrumented with a plurality of RF antennae 25 that are spaced around its periphery. This may include locations on the floor, on the goal or backboard, on walls, suspended from the ceiling, etc. Although there is some flexibility in where antennae may be located, they should generally be fixed in dispersed stationary locations during the course of play. To avoid mathematical singularities, at least one of three or more antennae should not be collinear and at least one of four or more should not be coplanar. These antennae are in wired or wireless communication with a remote computational device 30, either directly or relayed through one another. Each antenna may also include a separate microprocessor to control incoming and outgoing signals. The remote computational device 30 may be a smart phone, a tablet computer, a laptop computer, a microprocessor or any other computational device that has sufficient compute power to both communicate with the antennae and compute ball locations from the received antennae signals. The calculation of ball locations may also be performed in whole or part by microprocessors that may be located proximate the antennae. The remote computational device 30 may also be in communication with a database that can store data for later review and editing. Wireless communication amongst the various devices may be through Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11, or any other RF, optical or acoustic protocol. The goal 26 is fitted with a performance monitoring system 27 that can detect when a ball/goal interaction has occurred, which places the ball close to the goal 26. The performance monitoring system 27 is also in wired or wireless communication with the same or a separate remote computational device 30.

[0031] During a shooting session, the RF antennae 25 are continuously monitoring the position of all balls 1 on the court preferably at a rate between 2 and 40 Hertz and more preferably between 10 and 20 Hertz and sending signals to the remote computational device 30; however, most of the data received by the remote computational device does not contribute to determining the location of the player position for a shot and therefore may be ignored. Such data is only relevant when a shot trigger event occurs. A shot trigger event may be the detection of a ball/goal interaction by the performance monitoring system 27 or the calculation of a ball location by the ball location reckoning system that is proximate the goal 26 within some threshold distance. A shot trigger event means that a shot was likely taken by a player and once it occurs, the antennae 25 signal data that were received within a time window prior to the trigger event are analyzed in order to determine the initial location of the shot. If a shot trigger event was generated by the performance monitoring system 27, the data corresponding to each ball 1 are analyzed by the remote computational device 30 to determine which ball is closest to the goal and likely caused the trigger event. Once determined, the data from the identified ball are analyzed to determine which points lie along a ballistic arc 28. This may be accomplished by starting with the point just prior to the trigger event and adding each additional point backwards in time until a point no longer fits closely to a ballistic arc 28. The last point (first point in time) that fits the arc is an approximation of the location of the ball when the shot was initiated. The calculation for how closely a set of points fit the ballistic arc may be performed in 3D space by fitting the points to a parabola or in 2D space by fitting the points to a line. Not only do points have to fit to proscribed curves in Cartesian space, but they must also fit proscribed curves in distance versus time space. This means for points that lie on the arc, calculated vertical distances should be a quadratic function of time and calculated horizontal distance should be a linear function of time.

[0032] It is apparent that there has been provided in accordance with the present invention a basketball performance monitoring system which fully satisfies the objects, means and advantages set forth hereinbefore. While the present invention has been described in the context of specific embodiments thereof, other alternatives, modifications, and variations will become apparent to those skilled in the art having read the foregoing description. Accordingly, it is intended to embrace those alternatives, modifications, and variations as fall within the broad scope of the appended claims.