CMU Students Design Footballs And Gloves To Help Referees

We have all watched a football game with close calls that we don't exactly agree with the referee on, but will new advancements in technology help or hinder the situation? Footballs and gloves with sensors just may be able to help referees with those close calls make more accurate calls.

Dr. Priya Narasimhan, of Carnegie Mellon University has developed the football and gloves equipped with sensors that can precisely determine whether the ball has hit the ground before being intercepted or not. For those who are blind and do not have thousands of dollars worth of video equipment, the built-in GPS claims that it can determine whether or not the ball has crossed the goal line.

"Knowing these contact points can tell how a ball is being thrown and how different people throw," Narasimhan said, "so you could train how someone is throwing to match how they should throw."

The gloves have 15 touch sensors in the fingers and palm that run to a wireless device on the back of the arm. I sure hope this device is extremely strong. They really aim to keep the guess work out of this sport as they will eventually be adding sensors in shoes to measure stride and running patterns, or even shoulder pads, to calculate blocking positions and force.