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Loughborough University

Loughborough University
Leicestershire, UK
LE11 3TU
+44 (0)1509 263171

The View - Spring / Summer 2008

Research lab with man swinging golf club

Engineering sporting success

As the UK prepares for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games it is not just the athletes who are training hard. At Loughborough University some of the country’s most talented engineers are hoping that they too may win some medals for Team GB by creating the next generation of sporting apparel, equipment and coaching tools. Judy Smyth went to meet the people who believe modern engineering can give the UK’s elite athletes the wining edge, as well as make sport more accessible and enjoyable for all.

Loughborough has long been known as the home of UK sport. It has an unparalleled record of sporting excellence and some of the most celebrated names in sport, including world record-breaking athletes Sebastian Coe, Paula Radcliffe, Steve Backley and Tanni Grey-Thompson, have studied at the University. Today Loughborough continues to nurture the sporting stars of the future.

Heat sensor machine and man runningBut it is not just on the field that Loughborough excels. Behind the scenes a team of dedicated academics from the Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering have built up a world leading Sports Technology Research Group that has proven what a difference engineering can make to sporting success and participation.

“Research in this area at Loughborough first began in 1987 when the University’s Professor Roy Jones embarked on a study looking at the computer-aided-design of golf clubs, working with Dunlop Slazenger,” said Professor Mike Caine, Director of the University’s new Sports Technology Institute. “On the back of the success of this project his area of work grew to include other sports and his research team expanded, leading to the formation of the Sports Technology Research Group.

“I joined the group in 1999 to drive forward the introduction of an undergraduate teaching programme in sports technology. This was one of the first courses of its kind in the UK and continues to be one of the most successful. I brought with me my own research interests in exercise equipment and athletic apparel and over the years we recruited more staff. With extensive funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), via the University’s Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre, the group has flourished. Today we have a 50-strong team of academics, research associates, technicians and PhD students, and research interests right across the sporting goods domain, from footballs and footwear to tennis rackets and rugby shirts.”

Over the last 20 years the research group has worked with a host of global sporting brands including adidas, Callaway Golf, Canterbury of New Zealand, Head, New Balance, Nike, Reebok, Sports World International (Dunlop Slazenger) and Umbro on the design, simulation, testing and manufacture of sports equipment. Recently it has been involved in a number of high profile industry sponsored projects, including the development and validation of the revolutionary adidas 2006 World Cup and EURO 2008 footballs, durability testing of Nike’s Rugby World Cup apparel and the development of personalised football boots for premiership players using pioneering rapid manufacturing technologies.

Its involvement in these blue ribbon projects has seen the research group go from strength to strength, culminating last year in a £15 million investment from the University and East Midlands Development Agency (emda) to establish a Sports Technology Institute at the Loughborough campus. The institute provides a state-of-the-art home for the research group, enabling it to expand its research and develop cutting-edge technology to assist team GB in the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“The creation of the Institute has allowed us to take the next step in the group’s development and to broaden the remit of what we do,” added Professor Caine. “Using our expertise to support Team GB will be a key part of our work over the next four years.”

Discussions are now taking place between the Sports Technology Institute, the British Olympic Association (BOA) and UK Sport to establish how the University can assist in the country’s Olympic effort. Several projects are already underway that seek to give Team GB the winning edge by providing athletes and the sports governing bodies with state-ofthe- art training equipment, performance-monitoring devices to enhance coaching and customised clothing and footwear.

“We do not want to give a competitive advantage to anyone other than Team GB so a lot of the work we are doing in this area is top secret,” Professor Caine explains. “However there are a couple of examples I can give that illustrate how we are using our sports technology expertise to improve sporting performance. We are currently developing an underwater monitoring and wireless feedback system for swimming coaches, in partnership with UK Sport. This will enable coaches to carry out an in-depth analysis of a swimmer’s performance whilst they are in the water, and provide detailed guidance on where technical improvements need to be made.”

The research group is also involved in a study on personalised footwear, again in partnership with UK Sport and New Balance, a large sports footwear manufacturer. For this project the group is investigating ways of changing the mechanical properties of the outer soles of sprint spikes. The ultimate aim is to personalise the characteristics of running shoes to meet the exact needs of individual athletes, thus improving their efficiency and power output.

“We will work exclusively with Team GB, the BOA and UK Sport to ensure that what we deliver provides our athletes with the winning edge,” Professor Caine added. “This is all about winning Olympic medals, and the Institute has an important role to play in helping to increase our medal winning chances. The technologies we are developing will assist athletes when they are training, when they are competing, and in some projects we are even looking at technologies that can aid the rehabilitation of athletes after they sustain an injury.

“But our interest in sport doesn’t end with elite performance. We also recognise the need to encourage everyone to be more active and are committed to developing new sporting goods that achieve this.”

i.play in actionA recent project in this area has been the development of i.play, interactive outdoor play equipment, which saw the Sports Technology Research Group and University spin-out company Progressive Sports Technologies work in partnership with leading UK play equipment manufacturer Playdale. i.play can be used by up to six children at one time and works by issuing each player or team with a sequence of tasks to test speed, agility, coordination, strength and stamina by running, jumping and twisting to hit high, low and mid-positioned activity switches. Like a games console, it offers multiple levels of difficulty so players can improve their skill and view statistics to monitor their performance both during and after the game. The equipment has already been installed on several playgrounds across the country as part of the Walkers (part of PepsiCo) ‘Parks for Life’ initiative.

“i.play is a perfect example of how our research can help make everyone more active,” explains Professor Caine. “Childhood obesity is a growing problem, with many young people choosing to spend hours playing computer games rather than playing outside. i.play tackles this issue by integrating elements of computer gaming into outdoor physical exercise.”

The i.play project also demonstrates the important role of the Sports Technology Institute in enhancing innovation and enterprise in the sport and leisure sector. Since 2001 three spin-out companies – including Progressive Sports Technologies – have been launched from the Sports Technology Research Group, which together have generated turnover in excess of £1 million. The group also has a strong track record of patent generation and licensing of new technologies and products, with several of the robotic test rigs it has created being extensively used by industry to monitor the performance of new products.

“Working with industry has always been an important part of the Sports Technology Research Group,” Professor Caine said. “As well as offering our research expertise to support some of the biggest names in the sporting goods industry, we have also been able to commercialise our own research and now have a lot of experience in this field. We want to use this experience to help sporting goods businesses in the UK tap into this market, and now we have the Sports Technology Institute will be able to build on our consultancy service and offer it to more outside organisations and individuals.”

The Sports Technology Research Group has been able to successfully combine research, teaching and enterprise to establish itself as world leader in its field. Its work is helping to improve the performance of the UK’s elite athletes, as well as encourage all of us to do more physical exercise, and its ethos of encouraging and nurturing innovation has resulted in the development of some of the most exciting sporting goods in recent years. The creation of the Institute looks set to boost the international profile of the group further and make it the research centre of choice across the world for sports technology.

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