Formular One technology tracks athletes

Sports coaches can now track the movement and position of individual athletes and teams indoors and outdoors thanks to McLaren and Cambridge-based Ubisense.

Ubisense provides location data through a network of ultra-wideband RF tags, which is collated and analysed by McLaren using tools derived from its Formula One activities.

"The network of tags and sensors allows the dynamic position of athletes to be observed multiple times per second to within 15cm of their true location, something that was unachievable with other location systems," claimed McLaren. "The technique has already been deployed in netball, tennis, football, ice hockey and horse riding."

Information is delivered to a performance analysis dashboard.

"Using the solution coaches can dynamically observe dwell time, player velocity and coverage across courts and pitches. They can also conduct detailed post-play analysis using aggregate movement data and movement analysis for each individual player," said McLaren.