Your Shot, He Said, Distantly
Chips and Sensors Enable Athletic Face-Offs with
Faraway Foes
The New York Times, August 26, 2004
- For 23 years, Wilbert Q. Murdock, an engineering
professor turned sports technologist, has struggled
along with a small team of fellow believers to develop
golf clubs crammed with enough biomechanics and wireless
technologies to assess a golfer's swing and technique
during play.
"We wanted to be able to give anyone
who plays golf the perfect training tool, where they
can get instantaneous information," said Mr. Murdock,
the founder and chairman of Internet Golf Multimedia,
a company he operates out of his house in the Bronx.
The special clubs ($1,000 for a putter,
$2,000 for a driver) are designed to analyze a golfer's
swing and to post the data online. For now, that means
similarly equipped golfers can try to outdo one another
in the resulting statistics.
But the Internet opens an even more intriguing
possibility: letting golfers compete simultaneously
even when teeing up the ball thousands of miles apart.
Mr. Murdock wants to use cyberspace to free players
from the constraints of distance to enjoy not simply
a multiplayer virtual game - like zapping digital zombies
or racing on 3-D racetracks - but a game that is "totally
real."
The idea goes beyond golf. A fitness training
program called NetAthlon from FitCentric Technologies
offers competitive racing from the seats of exercise
bicycles connected by a digital network. A California
company, Sportwall International, is similarly developing
long-distance versions of racket sports, basketball
and baseball by incorporating digital sensors and microprocessors
into walls or mounted targets.
And that is not to mention the remote
dance party made possible in a new online game for Microsoft's
Xbox console.
Using computer-generated "space"
to help people interact is an objective as old as the
Internet itself, say scientists studying what they describe
as pervasive media. But as online applications grow,
the phenomenon of pervasive connections is both widening
and deepening, said Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist
at Stanford University.
"These kinds of technologies give
people more and more opportunities to interact with
people they really want to be with," Dr. Ito said.
She notes that being able to actually play golf with
a friend who is not able to be on the same golf course
"expands the social connection in a wide range
of settings."
And it appeals to the athletic instinct.
Sportwall International, based in Carpinteria, Calif.,
has developed a collection of fitness and sports training
equipment using chips and sensors - products that incorporate
the philosophy of "no pain, no gain that is the
foundation of athleticism and fitness," said Cathi
Lamberti, the founder and chief executive.
Using the look and sound of video games
to get people to swing a racket or throw a baseball,
Sportwall machines are in use in 85 schools and 80 tennis
clubs and parks, Ms. Lamberti said.
All of the company's products rely on
computerized surfaces that respond to physical contact,
often by a ball that is thrown or hit with a bat or
racket. The systems can calculate and assess athletic
performance as well as post scores. (Simpler versions,
for children who slap the targets with hands or balls,
are in use at 100 McDonald's restaurants.) Now as with
Mr. Murdock and his golf clubs, Ms. Lamberti is exploring
ways to let players use the equipment to compete remotely
- with one another or even a virtual pro. "Having
Andre Agassi at central court playing every kid in his
back yard is Phase 2 and 3," she said.
As such technology increasingly links
players - sometimes even without need of keyboards,
keypads and game controllers - it may fundamentally
change the way people think about virtual and physical
reality, said Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a research director
at the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think
tank.
"Traditionally we have thought of
the digital world as being an alternative universe separate
from physical reality," Mr. Pang said. "Part
of the reason it is thought of that way is that you
interact with digital information sitting in a particular
place in front of a computer, forcing you to look at
the screen.
"A result of that is why the metaphor
of cyberspace has held such potency. It has felt like
a different world."
With increasingly easy access to cyberspace
enabling people to connect to others engaged in the
same physical activities - especially familiar ones
like pedaling a bicycle, throwing a ball or swinging
a golf club - the barrier between the real world and
the virtual one begins to break down significantly,
Mr. Pang said.
"The kinds of interaction you can
have with digital information on a computer are changing
very rapidly," Mr. Pang said. "The information
is moving off the desktop and moving out into the world."
Scott. S. Fisher, chairman of the Interactive
Media Division of the School of Cinema-Television at
the University of Southern California, agreed.
"The amount of activity that we actually
are doing in virtual space is exploding," Professor
Fisher said. "So much more is happening in there,
and we have all these different pathways from the physical
environment linking in."
"There are a lot of different ways
to make that interaction work," he added, noting
that simply using a keyboard represents "a very
small window."
Mr. Pang called Mr. Murdock's golf technology
"a wonderful idea," noting that more sports
games are likely to emerge that require the same or
similar skills to play over virtual space as is required
in real space.
Such computerized systems that take advantage
of actual physical skills, Mr. Pang said, are what human-computer
interface experts call affordances.
"The wisdom of the smart golf club
is that is manages to take advantage of the years -
probably millions of man-hours - spent improving golf
swings," he said. "It does not require you
to play a game kind of golf," but something resembling
the real thing - up to a point. Golf, of course, is
still getting to the hole - on the same course as your
competition - in the fewest strokes. What the sensors
and circuitry in Mr. Murdock's clubs measure is the
quality of the swing: its intensity on a scale of 1
to 10, and whether the aim is true or likely to produce
a slice or hook.
The data can be transmitted to cellphones
or digital organizers that have Bluetooth wireless connections,
then relayed to the Internet, where users can compare
their showings, Mr. Murdock said. The company (ww.playgeniusgolf.com)
says it will begin shipping the clubs in December. Beyind
that, Mr. Murdock says he is looking at ways to outfit
courses for simultaneous remote competition of some
sort.
Bringing a digital dimension to traditional
recreation is attracting not only entrepreneurs like
Mr. Murdock but larger companies Konami Sports, part
of the Konami Corporation of Japan, which is seeking
to find new applications for the company's expertise
in video gaming. Konami, for example, produced stationary
bicycles that display avatars of the user racing in
a virtual environment.
And Konami's arcade and home video game
Dance Dance Revolution has shown the potential payoff
of such an approach, initiating millions of players
into playing a dance game by actually dancing. The game
uses a sensor pad placed on the floor to register how
well players follow complex patterns of steps displayed
on a television screen by either a PlayStation 2 or
Xbox game console. Once the game begins, there is little
need for traditional game controllers.
And a new version of the game to be released
this fall, Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix 2, takes
advantage of the Xbox's online capabilities. The result,
said Jason Enos, a Konami project manager, is a networked
game (about $40 for the game alone, and $65 with an
interactive dance pad) in which dancers can compete
with anyone playing the game who is plugged into the
Xbox Live network.
"Players can play online with each
other and talk live with other players," Mr. Enos
said. While players are not yet able to see opponents
dance while they do, symbols showing the steps dancers
are making, or failing to make, are displayed for contestants,
he said.
One day creating a dance game that actually
permits players to see their challengers as they dance
is not "pie in the sky," Mr. Enos said. Konami
has incorporated Sony's EyeToy, a motion-sensing video
camera, into a version of Dance Dance Revolution, though
not yet one that allows online play.
For his part, Mr. Murdock said the opportunities
were plentiful as new technologies and new like his
smart golf clubs further blended virtual and real space.
And one of the best aspects, he said,
is that "you will be essentially able to access
the network from any place you happen to be."
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