Intelligent sports equipment systems and methods
AssigneeHelios Sports, Inc.
InventorWilliam G. Near
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An intelligent sports equipment system and method for processing data as a result of different types of events associated with a puck or ball and generally another piece of sports equipment. The information associated with each type of event can include associating player information with the processed data. In one example a smart hockey puck has embedded electronics for sensing motion across a plurality of axes, a hockey stick has an associated RFID tag that can be read by the smart hockey puck, which can transmit information to a computing device for displaying processed data.
Claims20
An intelligent sports system comprising:
- a puck or ball having an electronics board embedded therein, wherein the electronics board includes the following components:
- a processing unit, a memory, a plurality of sensors for detecting motion along one or more axes, and at least one antenna configured to read RFID tags;
- and
- a stick or racket having an RFID tag associated therewith, wherein the electronics board of the puck or ball can read information from the RFID tag, and
- wherein the electronics board is configured to have an idle state and an active state,
- wherein during the active state the at least one antenna configured to read RFID tags is activated to scan for RFID tags, and
- upon identifying the RFID tag associated with the stick or racket causes the electronics board to process at least a portion of motion data sensed by the puck or ball to be associated with the scanned RFID tag associated with the stick or racket.
A method for tracking information about a puck or ball having an embedded electronics board therein in an intelligent sports system, that further includes one or more sticks or rackets each having one or more RFID tags positioned on a portion of the stick or racket, the method comprising:
- determining that a triggering event has occurred, using the electronics board;
- altering the state of the electronics board from an idle state to an active state based on the triggering event;
- activating an RFID scanning system of the electronics board during the active state, wherein the scanning system is configured to perform a scan and includes at least one antenna;
- retrieving tag data from a scanned RFID tag that is associated with one of the one or more sticks or rackets.
A method for tracking information about a puck or ball having an embedded electronics board therein in an intelligent sports system, that further includes one or more sticks or rackets each having a plurality of RFID tags positioned about a portion of the stick or racket, the method comprising:
- determining that a triggering event has occurred, using at least one sensor component of the electronics board;
- activating an RFID scanning system of the electronics board based on the triggering event,
- scanning using the RFID scanning system for each of the plurality of RFID tags, wherein the RFID scanning system includes at least one antenna;
- and
- retrieving scanned data from each scanned RFID tag that is associated with one of the one or more sticks or rackets.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.