University of Twente Student Theses
Exploring the interaction potential for drones in rowing
Jacob, Jonathan Ruben (2024) Exploring the interaction potential for drones in rowing.
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| Abstract: | The integration of technology into professional sports has transformed many disciplines into high-performance scenarios with the goal of enhancing performance, increasing engagement or preventing injury. This presents a novel frontier for Human Machine Interaction (HMI) to create unique solutions for athletes, coaches and spectators. Rowing, as an Olympic discipline, already employs various technological tools for monitoring and analyzing rowing behaviour. However, some of the existing methods like video analysis tools are often limited to an indoor environment, not suitable for the dynamic nature of rowing outdoors on water. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), better known as drones have the distinct capability maneuvering freely in 3D space. They offer the unique possibility to track and monitor athletes from unique vantage points in real-time. This thesis sets out to explore the potential for interactions between drones and rowers. The goal is to leverage the unique capabilities of drone technology to illuminate new ways for increasing either engagement, performance or learning within the sport of rowing. Qualitative research methods like expert interviews and a state-of-the-art review are used to gain knowledge about rowing and drone technology. An iterative design process is used to create a prototype that leverages the unique expressive capabilities of a drone to simulate a competitive racing scenario for the rower in Virtual Reality (VR). The results from an evaluation with 19 participants have shown a potential for increasing the engagement of rowers. Additionally, the drone was found to help athletes with pacing their own speed while rowing. Limitations were identified in connection to the ambiguity of some of the drone’s actions. The individual’s perception strongly influenced whether the drone’s intentions were understood and how they were interpreted. This study contributes to the growing field of HMI by offering a qualitative analysis of drone’s potential to increase engagement and expand training methodologies for athletes and coaches in the sport of rowing. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 54 computer science |
| Programme: | Creative Technology BSc (50447) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/102138 |
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