LIFT-T

Project Overview

Powerlifting is an upcoming strength-based sport that is rapidly gaining popularity. However, we can see that the judging of this sport is still stuck in the past. Referees are expected to rely on their bodies' capabilities to visually judge if the lift is executed correctly. I saw an opportunity for technology to be developed to aid these referees in their judging process, making the judging more fair and consistent.

February 2020
3 Months Execution Time
Final Bachelor Degree Project
Eindhoven University of Technology

Individual project

What is LIFT-T about?

1. Fairness: striving for fair judgement in competitive sport
2. Trust: athletes gaining trust in the judgement of the sport
3. Empowerment: give more people the chance to get a taste of the empowerment that this sport has given me

How does it work?

1. Lift

the lifter performs the squat by bending at the knees and hips

2. Capture

cameras capture the position of the lifter's body in space

3. Reflect

the footage is processed and the lift can be judged objectively

In this bachelor degree project I wanted to contribute to a field that is very close to my heart. I have been powerlifting for a few years now and getting into that sport has been so good for me as an individual. I gained confidence, learned to push myself and learned to manage my mindset on a whole new level. This sport makes me feel empowered and resilient.

Personal connection

The squat experience

The athlete gets hyped up back stage ...
The last slap on the back from the coach ...
The time has come ...
The athletes walks up to the platform …
The athlete unracks the bar and gets in position in full focus …
The audible command ‘SQUAT’ sounds …
The athlete shoots down and pushes back up with all that he/she has …
The voices of the crows die out … was that deep enough? …
Three white light …
The crowd roars … he/she did it …

Squat depth rule

According to the International Powerlifting Federation's rulebook “…the lifter must bend the knees and lower the body until the top surface of the legs at the hip joint is lower than the top of the knees.” (IPF rulebook 2020)

I got started by doing ethnographic research into the needs and behaviors of my target users. During interviews with athletes in the Dutch powerlifting community, I learned that their experience of the sport was to some extent similar. The passion they expressed for the sport was beautiful. This group of athletes seemed eager to share their experiences in order to make the sport better.
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It became apparent that the biggest opportunity for design to improve the sport was the judging. There are a lot of rules an athlete needs to adhere to and all of these are now judged by the human eye. The rule that is most inconsistently judged is the squat depth. The judges are expected to judge if the mandatory depth is met. The timeframe in which an athlete is in this critical position is so short, and athletes move so fast that this judgement process is very demanding.
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I saw an opportunity for the development of technology that could aid judges in this process.

Judging

I explored various ways to accomplish this goal. Once my ideas started to take shape, I shot a video that I sent out to the athletes I was collaborating with. In this video I explained what kind of system I was envisioning and how it would work. This video came together with a survey that I used to refine and develop the concept.

The concept

Finally, I designed a system that would objectively track the squat depth of the athlete. Using cameras and optical tracking software, we can track the position of the athlete in space. The image processing algorithm I programmed uses a method called image segmentation to get data about the location of bands that were designed to go with the system.

The bands could be integrated into the athletes gear. The bands are made from reflective material that can be super accurately tracked by infrared cameras, making these bands ‘passive markers’. The accuracy of this system could therefore surpass the accuracy that can be achieved through existing body tracking software that works with (passive) markers. Hereby the squat could be accurately tracked without placing actual technology on the body. Users informed me that the latter would go against one of the core values in the sport which is raw natural athletic performance.

This project was very iterative. I had to redirect often and in the end, I think I could have anticipated these redirection moments a little earlier or even prevented some of them all together. This has taught me to make sure to stay in close contact with the people you are designing for. It took me some time before I fully understood that using technology on one’s body is not something that the sport of powerlifting is ready for. Powerlifting is still firmly rooted in history and changes only happen slowly and this is something that only became apparent in the later stages of evaluation.

One thing that became especially evident in this project is that actually prototyping the experience, rather than merely conceptualizing it, helped me immensely. Firstly, because it helped me understand the opportunities and limitations of the technology I was using. Secondly, and more importantly, it allowed me to bring the envisioned concept to life and allowed me and others to feel what the experience would be like. Real experiences and real interactions allow you to learn and understand contexts and problems at a much faster pace.

LIFT-T

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