A new study from the University of Florida shows how coaches can use artificial intelligence to maximize player performance while avoiding injury.
Coaches are using AI to win games by using fitness trackers and wearable sensors to help tell a coach when a player needs more rest or training, according to UF doctoral engineering student Mollie Brewer. By using AI, coaches can create optimal training programs for players to help them strategically win games.
Brewer and her colleague Kevin Childs were the lead researchers on the paper.
“We can quantify almost everything on and off the field,” she said, “and so we wanted to.”
This includes information about diet, heart rate, workload and hydration levels, according to their research paper titled “Coach, Data Analyst, and Protector: Exploring Data Practices of Collegiate Coaching Staff.”
Childs said the increased use of technology within sports sparked the research idea.
Brewer said she found the interdisciplinary aspect of coaching interesting. She said that the collaboration between people from academia and the athletic environment working together to better the athletes impressed her.
“We have everybody from biomedical engineering to security and privacy to computer science to help in human performance,” she said.
The pair presented their paper at the Association for Computing Machinery Computer-Human Interaction conference in Yokohama, Japan, which ran from April 26 to May 2. They stressed the importance of using AI to analyze athletes’ data. Bettering athletic performance through technology is something that athletes and coaches internationally can relate to, Brewer said.
With the advent of new technology comes concern for athletes’ well-being, Brewer said. Coaches are becoming worried over data overload, an influx of information that is difficult to decipher, stressing out athletes, she said. Coaches work to strategically manage that stress and keep athletes motivated.
According to the research paper, coaches only share selective information with athletes to avoid overwhelming them. By giving athletes data in a simplified form, they can avoid competitiveness and rumination over the numbers, coaches told the two in the paper.
“Blackbox metrics” is the gray area of how AI technology works, according to Childs. It explains the disconnect between how AI gathers its data and how coaches interpret it. He says coaches will likely run into more issues with blackbox metrics as the use of AI increases.
While the two had similar views on using AI in basketball, they didn’t share the same sentiment for using AI in their own competitive sports.
“I am a big user of technology,” said Brewer, a competitive cyclist, “I’m all about the innovation and understanding the human body in different ways.” She said she would be interested in incorporating AI into her athletic life.
Childs had a different take.
“Sports and athletics is a personal journey where I step away from technology,” said the competitive swimmer. He said that swimming has always used little technology.
“Our coaches wrote all of our workouts on the whiteboard,” he said, “Occasionally, we took our heart rate, putting our fingers on our neck and measuring our pulse.”
He said that without loftier goals requiring technology, he’s not interested in seeing that change for himself anytime soon.