Frisbee Pro

Frisbee Pro is your personal trainer, stat logger and gameplay analyst all in one. Frisbee Pro tracks a player's throws and scores each throw based on flight data collected from its on-board sensor. The frisbee then sends data to a base station on the sidelines, enabling players to track and analyze their throws as they happen.

Ultimate Frisbee is one of the fastest growing sports in America. Part of the explosion of fans and players of this sport is due to its simple rules, yet competitive nature. The Ultimate Frisbee will provide players valuable statistics about their practice and game, enabling them to improve. Teams as well as individual players will benefit from this all-in-one personal trainer.

Research projects

• Disc-Wing Aerodynamics Research
  A similar idea to ours was studied by Ralph D. Lorenz at the University of Arizona in 2003. He investigated the aerodynamics and flight dynamics of disc-wings such as Frisbees using on-board miniaturized instrumentation. His work was extensive, exploring sensor-vehicle integration issues characteristic of small-scale vehicles and in flight trajectory reconstruction from limited sensor data.
  

Consumer frisbee gadgets

• Currently, there does not exist any significant consumer frisbee device or gadget which helps players analyze their game. The lack of competitors in the market, combined with the growing popularity of the sport gives our product great potential to be a hit in the frisbee consumer market.

Hardware

• Arduino Pro Mini
• ST LPR5150AL Dual Axis Analog Gyro (1500 degress/sec)
• AA batteries
• Ultra-Star 175g Frisbee
• XBee Pro and shield
• HF RFID Module ID-12
• RFID Button Tags

Protocols

• XBee
• RFID protocol

• Functional Requirement: Our frisbee must track the rotational speed each user's throws. Furthermore, it will also track the path of the frisbee from player to player. Frisbee must transmit data to a computer when in range, and the functioning range should be great enough that the frisbee should be within range at least every 15 seconds.


• Studiness Requirement: The entire frisbee with embedded components must be able to withstand the wear and tear of 2 hours of constant throwing of the frisbee. Furthermore, the components must be shielded in a way so as not to injure the players when catching our frisbee.


• Fidelity Requirement: Gyroscope measurements must be accurate to within 30 degress/second of the actual angular velocity of the flying frisbee.


• Weight Consideration: The Frisbee must be as light as possible in order to ensure that flight of the loaded frisbee is not signifiantly different from that of a standard frisbee.

Chris Burchhardt cburchha@andrew.cmu.edu	Li Lin lglin@andrew.cmu.edu
Andrey Kostov akostov@andrew.cmu.edu	Phillip Liu prliu@andrew.cmu.edu