Performance Feedback Application for Athletes wins UCD Commercialisation Award

An early-stage business idea being developed by two PhD students to commercialise a new cross platform mobile application, to provide performance feedback to runners, has won a University College Dublin (UCD) commercialisation award.

The aim of the application is to provide athletes, clinicians and research scientists, complete and objective movement analysis quicker and more cost effectively than currently available applications.

The application is paired with a single inertial sensor worn by individual runners. Through this sensor the application provides rapid movement analysis directly to the end users. It also allows runners to continually update a library of their movement patterns through an automatic built-in classification tool.

Using the acquired data the application can then be used by runners to prevent overtraining, through a warning signal system; to provide biomechancial feedback and analysis; and to provide direct feedback on performance based on inputted goals, through easy to understand feedback.

This business idea, which has won the 2015 UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Programme, is being developed by Darragh Whelan and Martin O’Reilly. Both are currently completing their PhDs under the supervision of Professor Brian Caulfield in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at University College Dublin.

The UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Programme is a 1-day initiative designed and delivered by UCD’s technology transfer and enterprise development teams at NovaUCD.

The programme aims to encourage the development of commercial outputs arising from data science research taking place at UCD by engaging with researchers at an earlier stage in the commercialisation process.

Brendan Cremen, UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation said, “I would like to congratulate Darragh and Martin on winning the 2015 UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Award. This early-stage business idea to develop a tablet application providing quick and cost effective performance feedback to runners has the potential to make a significant impact in the sport industry in Ireland and internationally.”

He added, “Our objective with the Sprint Programmes is to engage with UCD researchers at an earlier stage in the commercialisation process, in an exciting and fun environment, and to use internal and external experts to assist them in understanding and defining more clearly the commercial potential of the outputs emerging from their research activities.”

Darragh Whelan said, “We are delighted to have won the 2015 UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Award. The programme was extremely informative and provided us with valuable tools that will help with the development of our research in a commercial and social setting.”

Martin O’Reilly said, “The next thing for us is to identify our first group of users to test our technology so we that can refine it before bringing it closer to market. The guidance and prize fund provided by NovaUCD will greatly assist us with this.”

During the 1-day 2015 UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Programme a number of internal and external technology and business professionals collaborated with the UCD researchers to explore the commercial potential of transforming their research ideas into early-stage engineering business ideas.

At the end of the programme the winners were presented with a €1,000 prize fund to assist them to further develop the business idea, as it was judged to have the most commercial potential.

The 2015 UCD Data Science Innovation Sprint Programme, which took place at NovaUCD, involved a total of 5 early-stage data science business ideas.

The members of the judging panel for the Programme were Eamonn May, a business mentor; Ryan Meshes, a Technical Evangelist at Microsoft and Brendan Cremen, Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation, UCD.

This is the fifth 1-day Innovation Sprint Programme delivered at UCD. Four other programmes focused on Agri-Food; CleanWeb; Engineering and Life Science business opportunities have been held over the last 18-month period.