Cool Burton Snowboard app

I found this interesting article on usatoday.com

Mar 10, 2011

Nokia's smartphone app calculates 

snowboarders' rush

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By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY

                                            Nokia and Burton snowboards 

                                            have teamed up to deliver a prototype smartphone  

                                            app that requires intense physicality to activate.

Professional and amateur snowboarders this week are testing the technology, dubbed Push Snowboarding, at the 29th Burton US Opensnowboard contest at Stratton Mountain, Vermont.

An array of digital sensors feed data into Nokia's app, which calculates downward force, heart rate and galvanic skin response, along with the speed and orientation of the snowboard in real time. The output gets displayed on a Nokia Symbian smartphone. Here's a video showing the technology in action:

"This gives you some insight into what the rider is emotionally going through," says Stuart Wells, who's managing this project for Nokia. "It gives you an insight into the mind of the rider."

In other words, this app is designed to measure the "rush" a snowboarder experiences while of pulling off a big maneuver. The data being crunched comes from:

• A standard heart rate monitor stuck to the rider's chest.
• A galvanic skin response, or GSR, wrist band measuring skin moisture.
• Pressure pad on insoles of rider's boots that indicate release of weight, or air time.
• A matchbox- sized sensor on the snowboard that measure the board's orientation in space, or rotations.
• A GPS unit on the handset programmed to calculate speed.

In earlier tests at the European Open, Nokia and Burton were able to document that amateur snowboarders tend to experience elevated emotions approaching and during a manuever, says Wells. By contrast, old-school pros like Terje Haakonsen remain relatively calm on approach and during execution, only registering a rush after they land a big move.

Similar research is under way at London's Imperial College: a digital sensor that fits behind an athlete's ear gathers data about posture, step frequency, acceleration and response to shock waves travelling through the body. A miniature processor fitted inside an earpiece collects this data and wirelessly transmits it to a laptop so that the performance of an athlete can be monitored in real time.