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Piezoelectric Tennis Rackets
morcheeba writes "EETimes has an article on a piezoelectric tennis racket made by Head Sport AG. It uses piezoelectric fibers to damp vibrations and, due to regulations, it doesn't contain a battery. Although it's been out a while, it's now gaining credibility with professionals and has made it into the quarterfinals of the French Open."
They're using it in skis, too.
I would like to see if it is usable in automobile suspensions. Active electronic dampening should out perform any hydraulics.
Come to think of it, this technology could be used to make an active muffler for auto exhaust systems. It could also absorb driveline vibrations.
Wonder if it could do anything for crankshaft vibration?
hanzie
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
This thing actively controls tension in the racquet strings, so with more sensors, it could become an aimbot. Just hit the ball in roughly the right direction, and leave the precision targeting to the computers.
The Australian Football League allowed the use of gloves 7 or so years back. The AFL has been in existance over 100 years without them but that perceived advantage lead to half of the players (at least) playing the game using them. Juniors at the local clubs naturally followed suit, and the sport as a whole suffered because of fewer numbers participating due to the cost.
I love technology, but the advantages and disadvantages of somthing like this have got to looked at carefully before this should be permitted at any level.
That is to say, if the racket can make a difference based on the energy it can recover from the ball impact, what could you do if you built a self generating power system into the racket handle, much like technology used in a self winding electronic watch, but at a much larger scale? Of course, without a battery the power generated could be stored in a capacitor until used. While this approach seems far beyond the sprit of the game, one could say the same about piezoelectric technology in the first place. I'm just thinking, if it going to be used at all, why not get energy from all racket movement as well as ball impact.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I've heard of making the raquet sing with a nice shot, but this is rediculous. :)
I wonder though, could they make the strings sound a certain tone depending on where the ball was hit. It seems it might make a nice training tool for beginners if they could hear, as well as feel a good hit.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Wow! The International Tennis Federation must've really been out to lunch on this one, or maybe these are the same guys who run the U.S. Patent Office. Their rule against batteries was obviously meant to thwart the use of devices with enough power to physically affect play. What could a digital clock in the handle do?
They just didn't anticipate using a tennis ball's impact energy to warp the racquet to counteract the player's mistakes, which is what this racquet does.
So okay, I guess we can look forward to gyro-torque batting gloves, pass-booster elbow wraps for quarterbacks, and hockey pucks with tooth-targeting microcameras.
There's nothing inherently fair about naked wrestling, though, nor inherently unfair about using more advanced equipment. All other things being equal, including skill level, a large muscular person will win a wrestling match with a smaller slighter person. That's why weight classes were invented, to try and make sure that it was the skill that won out. This logic still only partially levels the field though; some people have inherently, genetically faster reflexes than others. What are you going to do, force them to bely down a couple of shots of reflex inhibitor (flavor optional) before competing?
The competition in sports is between two or more people, under some arbitrary set of rules. If you want to make sure everybody uses the same equipment, then you specifiy it in the rules; bats may or may not be made of aluminum, players may or may not ride an electric cart to the next stage of the competition.
Personally, I'd like to see both a naked olympics (not necessarily actually naked, but not technically assisted) AND a total free-for-all - not only are you allowed to be "professional" under the ridiculously convoluted Olympic rules regarding acceptance of money, but you can take drugs, train in a 3G centrifuge, be surgically cyborged into a totally transhuman state, et cetera... It'd only be a decade or so before all US objection to genetic engineering faded away once ESPN started lobbying, I betcha!
Eventually you can run a microchip and a voice synth on the kinetic energy. Imagine a racket that gives running commentary about your performance...
*THWACK*
"Lame wrist!"
*THWACK*
"Hit harder!"
*THWACK*
"Is that the best you can do?"
*THWACK*
"Try aiming it"
*THWACK*
"Moron"
*THWACK*
"You'd think you could hit the field, it's big enough for Chris..."
*CRASH* *CRASH* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD*
"Why is the world going dark...?"
"I'm afraid, Mr. McEnroe."
"My mind is going...."
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Both the Intelligence and conventional rackets deflect backward somewhat upon ball impact. With a conventional racket, the ball leaves the stringbed before the racket returns to its normal position. The Intelligence, with its active electronic microchip system, creates a counterforce that deflects the racket slightly forward as the ball leaves the stringbed. The net effect is a 50 percent reduction in vibration.
Pictures and a more detailed description can be found here