January 2012 Sports Talk Looks at Scoring Technology in GAA

The next talk in the NUI Galway public talk series on Sports Technology will take place on Tuesday, 17 January at 6pm. Entitled A score or not a score – that is the question! Score detection and other technologies in Gaelic games, soccer and other field sport, the talk will be delivered by Liam Kilmartin, Lecturer with the School of Engineering and Informatics at NUI Galway.

According to Liam Kilmartin: “From Geoff Hurst in 1966 to Frank Lampard in 2010, the inability to determine whether valid goals have been scored in soccer has generated much press and debate. Similar discourse has erupted at times in GAA circles particularly relating to hurling where determination of valid point scores is often even more challenging due to the speed and height of the sliotar.”

The talk will initially focus on the challenge of score detection in a number of sports, and will examine technologies which have been proposed for use in both soccer and Gaelic sports, ranging from a prototype system developed for the GAA in the late 1990s to contemporary systems such as Hawkeye and other candidates for ‘goal line technology’ currently being considered by FIFA.

The second half of the talk will examine in a broader sense how modern communication and sensor technology is being used in team sports such as soccer, GAA, Australian football and rugby to aid in monitoring player performance both in training and during actual games. The final portion of the talk will examine possible future technologies which could help with player’s mental focus, possibly determining when they are in the zone and hence ready mentally to perform at an optimal level.

Liam Kilmartin, an NUI Galway Engineering graduate, has been a Lecturer in Electronic Engineering at the University since 1994. His research interests include signal and image processing algorithms and applications and wireless and mobile communication technology. He was one of two Principle Investigators on a GAA/Enterprise Ireland (formerly Forbairt) co-funded project which ran from 1998 to 2002. The project focused on the development of technology to facilitate automated score detection in hurling. In recent years, his research interests have also focussed on how advanced technologies such as GPS, wireless communications and signal analysis can be applied to maximise athletes’ physical and mental conditioning.

The free public talk will take place in room ENG-3035 in the Engineering Building at NUI Galway.

The series of Sports Technology talks is being organised as part of NUI Galway’s degree programme in Sports & Exercise Engineering, whose students are being educated to design the next generation of sports and exercise systems and devices.

For more information on the Sports Technology talks, which are supported by Engineers Ireland (West), and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, visit www.ExerciseEngineering.com or call 091 492728.