Contributors List
1. Sports Technology and Engineering
ACTIVATION AND LIABILITY OF SPORTS ENGINEERING ACTIVITIES AROUND THE WORLD
S. UJIHASHI
Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
In 1989, “Sports Engineering” was invented in Japan as a technical discipline and the annual
“Sports Engineering Symposium” was launched as a domestic meeting the following year.
Subsequently the “Japan Sports Engineering Association (JSEA)” was established in 1991 as a domestic academic organization due to the unexpected level of success of the sympo- sium. The primary purposes of the symposium and the association were to encourage research activities on the hardware of sports, to unify the people who were interested in the field, and also to collect the information on the research of the hardware of sports. In 1996, Steve Haake launched “The International Conference on the Engineering of Sports” in Sheffield, which was the first international sports engineering conference organized. The establishment of the ISEA (International Sports Engineering Association) and the publica- tion of the journal “Sports Engineering” followed in 1998. After these happenings, the development of an organization of the people who were interested in Sports Engineering and other related fields and an increase in sports engineering research was fulfilled to that of the current condition. In this article, the brief history of sports engineering and other related fields is introduced and it is shown how much the related research has contributed to the improvement of sports performance and the sports industry. Furthermore it is insisted that sports engineering activities must not be for the satisfaction of researchers themselves, that is, for their hobby, but must contribute to the performance, safety, pleas- ure and happiness of the people who love sports.
1 Introduction
Since the idea of “Sports Engineering” was born, almost 20 years passed and during this period the activities of Sports Engineering have grown significantly. In this article the process is overviewed and it is discussed what Sports Engineering is for and how the academic societies and the researchers should be involved in Sports Engineering.
In particular Sports Engineering must contribute to, and encourage, the growth of the sports industry and not only focus on the performance of sports. Thus, the current condi- tion of the sports industry is also introduced and it is shown what the industry is expecting from the activities of Sports Engineering.
2 Beginning of Sports Engineering
Before 1989, the research achievements on the hard ware of sports were scattered in the various fields of literature and were difficult to find. “Hobby researchers” whose main field was different often produced these achievements, as they were interested in a particular sport as a hobby. And then their work on the hardware of sports was not considered as a regular research job.
3
The primary purpose of the JSEA (Japan Sports Engineering Association) was to unify the researchers who were involved in the research on the hardware of sports, and also to con- solidate the information on the research results. For these purposes the “Sports Engineering Symposium” was started in 1990 and JSEA was founded in 1991 as an academic organiza- tion. Table 1 and Table 2 show the statistics of the JSEA symposia and Figure 1 shows the proceedings in the past.
On the other hand, Steve Haake, of the University of Sheffield, started “The International Conference on the Engineering of Sport” in 1996. Initially his attempt was not recognized
Year Venue Papers Delegates
1990.10 Seminar House/Tokyo 30 124
1991.10 Sangyo-Shinko-Kaikan/Kawasaki 31 188
1992.10 Sangyo-Shinko-Kaikan/Kawasaki 31 154
1993.11 Kyurian/Tokyo 45 143
1994.11 Sangyo-Shinko-Kaikan/Kawasaki 46 157
1995.10 Tokyo Institute of Technology/Tokyo 46 170
1996.10 Coop-in Kyoto/Kyoto 65 178
1997.10 Chubu University/Ena, Gifu 52 134
1998.10 Ashiya/Hyogo 65 150
1999.10 Tukuba/Ibaragi 47 118
2000.11 Kochi-Kaikan/Kochi 57 134
2001.11 Japan Institute of Sports Sciences/Tokyo 41 117
2003.9 Yasuda Women’s University/Hiroshima 47 98
2004.11 Awaji Yume Butai/Hyogo 61 125
2005.9 Tokyo Institute of Technology/Tokyo 37 100
2006.11 Ishikawa Industrial Promotion Center/Kanazawa 70 167
2007.11 Tsukuba University/Tsukuba, Ibaraki – –
Table 1. JSEA Sports Engineering Symposia.
Ranking Topic No. of papers Composition ratio
1 Golf 101 0.183
2 Skiing 68 0.123
3 Tennis 60 0.180
4 Shoes 16 0.029
5 Bicycle cycling 14 0.025
Table 2. Statistics of the presented papers at the JSEA Sports Engineering Symposium (1990–2001).
by the JSEA and the first encounter with Steve Haake was in 1997. The JSEA invited him to the “Sports Engineering Symposium” in Japan after recognizing his attempt. This was a good opportunity to discuss this common idea and the JSEA became confident in the future of sports engineering activities because there was another person who has the same idea in the world to work with.
3 Conferences and Societies
In 1998 the ISEA (International Sports Engineering Association) was launched officially at the 2nd International Conference on the Engineering of Sport, in Sheffield. Then the two obvious organizations of sports engineering, that is, JSEA and ISEA became available to the world and each association ran their own conference.
Later in 2003, Aleksandar Subic from the RMIT University started another stream of conferences. This conference became “The Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology” at the 2nd Congress held in Tokyo in 2005, with the wider discipline of “Sports Technology”
rather than sports engineering. This idea was that not only sports engineering but also sports science related disciplines, such as sports biomechanics, sports medicine, sports manage- ment and others, must be included in order to improve the performance in sports.
Many conferences and societies have been, and are, related to sports in the world, how- ever, the above idea regarding the hardware of sports was unique and was not available in the past. These activities succeeded to certify the works on the hardware of sports in the same way as the other traditional engineering research works.
Table 3 and 4 show the statistics of the ISEA conferences and journals, and Figure 2 shows the organizers of the ISEA conferences 1996–2004.
After the formation of JSEA and ISEA, national sports engineering societies such as ASTA (Australasian Sports Technology Association), KSEA (Korean Sports Engineering Association), etc. have been founded. However generally speaking, the maintenance of a national society by itself is not easy, and therefore the possibility of a united organization of national societies has been discussed, but an effective unification model has not yet been established.
Activation and Liability of Sports Engineering Activities Around the World 5
Figure 1. Proceedings of the JSEA Sports Engineering Symposium.
4 Sports Performance
The development of the hardware of sports has contributed significantly in the improve- ment of records, safety, comfort and other aspects.
In the case of athletics, FRP (Fibre Reinforced Plastic) materials used in the pole vault increased the world record to 6 m14, as shown in Table 5, and the synthetic running tracks of polyurethane produced incredible results in all sprinting and jumping events, as shown in Table 6. In other events such as tennis, golf etc, the material revolution or development of new designs and manufacturing technologies has totally changed the equipment and also playing style. However, the excessive introduction of new technology has sometimes forced changes in the playing rules regarding the equipment.
Year Place Papers Countries Delegates
1996 Sheffield (UK) 47 10 75
1998 Sheffield (UK) 65 11 110
2000 Sydney (AUS) 57 9 80
2002 Kyoto (JPN) 151 15 210
2004 Davis (USA) 194 16 259
2006 Munich (Germany) 181 21 370
2008 Biarritz (France) – – –
Table 3. The ISEA (International Sports Engineering Association) international conference on the engineering of sport in the past.
Topic Total Topic Total
Biomechanics 24 Kayaking 2
Measurement 9 Rugby 2
Skiing 9 Swimming 2
Football 7 Badminton 1
Surface 5 Basketball 1
Tennis 5 Billiards 1
Bicycle cycling 5 Boat sailing 1
Golf 4 Bow archery 1
Baseball 3 Fishing 1
Bungee jump 2 Helmets 1
Cricket 2 Mountaineering 1
Hockey 2 Others 5
Table 4. Topic and number of papers published by the journal “Sports Engineering”
(vol. 5–9).
In tennis, for example, the material of the racket has changed from wood to CFRP, via a short period of metal. Because of the lightness and strength of CFRP, the maximum face area of rackets became almost twice the one of the wood era and as a result tennis became a much easier game for beginners to play.
On the other hand, in the professional game, tennis became less fun because the speed of ball was much higher than before and the receivers were in difficulties to return first services. As a result players with a fast service were more likely to control tennis games.
In order to solve this problem the ITF (International Tennis Federation) set a new rule regarding balls in 2001 as shown in Figure 3. Larger balls were introduced by the rule and their usage was recommended on fast surfaces to reduce speed after bouncing.
Activation and Liability of Sports Engineering Activities Around the World 7
Figure 2. Chairs of the ISEA Sports Engineering Conference.
Material Grip height Best record (Athlete) Year
Wood (hickory) No data 3 m 40 (no data) 1900
Bamboo 3 m 804 m 10 4 m 77 (no data) 1942
Metal 3 m 804 m 20 4 m 83 (Davis, USA) 1961
FRP 4 m 705 m 00 6 m 14 (Sergey Bubka, UKR) 1994
Table 5. Impact of the material in the pole vault.
Surface material Best record Athlete Year
Clay 10.0 seconds Bob Hayes (USA) 1964 (Tokyo)
Poly-Urethane 9.77 seconds Asafa Powell (JAM) 2005 (Athens) Table 6. Impact of synthetic surfaces in athletics (Men 100 metres).
Using golf as another example, in 1998 the USGA (United States Golf Association) banned clubs with a higher coefficient of restitution than 0.83 and the R&A (Royal &
Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews) decided to introduce this new rule from 2008.
The material of drivers has changed from wood to titanium. This material change enabled the structure of drivers to be thin-walled and eventually the COR went up signifi- cantly by the aid of a spring-like effect. Also CFRP has been introduced as the shaft mate- rial of clubs. Due to the material innovation, recent golf clubs can produce much longer carries and as a result, the new technologies in golf equipment may spoil the design con- cept of golf courses. The USGA became anxious that the new technology may change golf as more powerful players are more likely to control games. To avoid this trend, the USGA invented the new rule (Figure 4) which is more challenging.
This change of the golf rule caused great controversy between governing bodies and manufacturers. Nevertheless, the manufacturers were forced to stop the development of high technology products.
The harmonisation between sports equipment and their playing rules became more important than before as indicate by the above examples.
5 Sports Industry
The sports market is considered a part of the leisure market as shown in Table 7. In Japan the expenditure for leisure is about 16% of the gross expenditure and the fraction of sports Figure 3. Introduction of larger ball in tennis. Reprinted with permission by the International Tennis Federation (ITF, 2007); left side: Illustration to show the introduction of the Type 3 ball. It is 6%
larger than the standard Type 2 ball but weighs the same; right side: Type 3 ball.
Figure 4. New Rule on the COR of Golf Club Heads (GolfDigest, 2007).
is only about 7% of the leisure, that is, about only 1% of gross expenditure. In order to develop the sports industry, more people must participate in sports, i.e. people must spend more time and money for sports. However Japanese people, particularly young generation are not keen to play sports but are very likely to enjoy watching professional sports. Japan faces big problems in the near future as the population of the young generation is decreasing sig- nificantly and also their body power is inferior to the former generation.
In order to encourage sports participation, the development of the infrastructure for sports must be enhanced and the life style must be changed.
The sports industry is divided into two major parts, the software and the hardware as shown in Figure 5. The software comprises various sports schools, travel and tickets for sports events etc. and the hardware encompasses equipment, facilities, and infrastructure etc.
In the last 15 years the trend is an obvious decrease in the expenditure for sports.
Around 1990 it was predicted that the sports industry market size would grow up to JPY 10,000 billion. However this prediction did not materialize and the current market size is almost half of the expectation in the past. Many reasons are considered however the prob- lem is whether sports engineering activities can improve the current situation.
Activation and Liability of Sports Engineering Activities Around the World 9
Year GNE Leisure
Sport Hobby Entertainment Travel Total
1989 399.046 4.700 10.576 39.537 10.604 65.417
1990 435.361 5.179 10.558 44.862 12.171 72.770
1991 454.486 5.696 10.617 49.701 12.725 78.739
1992 476.064 6.005 10.646 52.955 12.480 82.086
1993 479.761 5.898 10.939 54.486 11.974 83.297
1994 483.201 5.746 11.157 56.097 11.725 84.725
1995 486.921 5.748 11.325 56.778 11.828 85.679
1996 500.310 5.693 11.937 55.366 12.146 85.142
1997 521.861 5.576 11.879 59.919 11.878 89.252
1998 515.834 5.330 11.820 58.503 11.362 87.015
1999 511.837 5.117 11.809 57.610 11.018 85.554
2000 513.534 4.886 11.822 57.226 11.124 85.058
2001 496.776 4.788 11.730 55.178 10.972 82.668
2002 489.618 4.599 11.697 56.139 10.813 83.248
2003 490.543 4.525 11.488 55.315 10.438 81.766
2004 496.058 4.380 11.632 54.775 10.554 81.341
2005 502.456 4.297 11.161 53.949 10.686 80.093
Table 7. The market size of leisure in Japan; GNE: Gross National Expenditure, 1012 JPY (Ujihashi, 2006).
6 Liability of Sports Engineering
The activities of Sports Engineering started in Japan about 20 years ago and expanded inter- nationally very quickly. Regarding these 20 years as the first stage, the role was enlightenment of the importance of Sports Engineering and this was fulfilled successfully. In the next stage, Sports Engineering must perform as a real academic body that will support sports from the view point of manufacturing of the hardware of sports.
The role of Sports Engineering would be threefold:
1. Contributing to making sports more exciting, comfortable and safe 2. Supporting the manufacturers of the sports hardware
3. Environmental considerations that are the same as engineering in other fields For the above roles researchers in academia must actively promote collaboration with the sports industry and try hard to produce a real contribution to sports. Thus, we should avoid “hobby research” which came from individual curiosity like research that was con- ceived with the thought “I wanted to know why this is”. Unfortunately there are consider- able numbers of papers produced by “Hobby researchers” in the past publications, even in Sports Engineering.
At the same time, as engineers we must of course regard environmental considerations:
the avoidance of mass production and mass consumption is highly important in sports too.
Price is a most effective tool to reduce the amount of consumption. Engineers must adopt the philosophy that a price reduction to beat a competitor is almost a criminal strategy.
7 Conclusion
The size of the sports industry is not so big in comparison to other industries like the auto- mobile, electrical appliance, chemical industries etc. The size of academic societies or univer- sity departments is also proportional to the corresponding industry. Therefore the activities of sports engineering cannot expand without limit. An important point would be to act prop- erly as a unique academia to support sports. At the same time, the creation of international cooperation between national societies would be a good strategy to maintain the societies
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 [1012 JPY]
7
'88 '8 '9 '9 '9 '9 '9 '9 '96 '97 '98 '99 '0 '01 '0 '0 '0 '05
Hard Soft
Figure 5. The market size of sports industry in Japan (Ujihashi, 2006).
themselves. “Sports Technology”, as an expanded keyword of “Sports Engineering”, might be another strategy to assist the survival of “Sports Engineering”.
Anyway for activities related to sports, the most important aspect is to maintain peo- ple’s health by promoting participation in sports and therefore the ultimate purpose of Sports Engineering is to also follow this philosophy.
References
GolfDigest (2007) USGA, R&A reach agreement on spring-like effect: uniform policy to be adopted in 2008 (online, May 9, 2007). Available: http://www.golfdigest.com/
equipment/index.ssf?/equipment/20020509usga.html (accessed: 14 June 2007).
ITF (2007) History of Rule 3 – The Ball (online). Available: http://www.itftennis.com/
technical/rules/history/ (accessed 14 June 2007).
Ujihashi S. (2006) Sports Engineering. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo.
Activation and Liability of Sports Engineering Activities Around the World 11