Although historically among the most popular of sports, today, combative sports are often viewed as an expression of our savage past. Of primary concern are the long term effects of participating in these sports on the health of participants. The scoring of such sports has also been the subject of much debate, with a panel of judges making decisions about very quick events involving large sums of prize money.
We developed an electronic system for use primarily in the sport of boxing, though it is suitable for martial arts such as karate and taekwondo. The technology is based on our sensor platform and integrates a network of sensors on the athletes head, body and hands. Using a Bluetooth network physical contacts are monitored in near real-time or post event on a remote computer to determine legal hits and hence derivative measures like scoring and final outcomes.
More information can be found on Queensland Sports Technology Cluster
The work was published here
Kane Partridge, Jason P Hayes, Daniel James, Allan Hahn, "A wireless-sensor scoring and training system for combative sports", Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5649, p. 402-408, Smart Structures, Devices, and Systems II; Said F. Al-Sarawi; Ed. Feb 2005 and several patents were generated