Physical activities during infancy and adolescence are well-suited in order to prevent health hazards like obesity. Because of little motivation for an active lifestyle the challenge to attract physical exercises to young people arises. The aim of the project “Mobile Motion Advisor” is to assist and motivate pupils during their sportive activities through modern technologies (sensors, mobile devices, Internet).
The intention of any mobile motion assistance is to support athletes (leisure time and competitive sport) in their training. A mobile device gathers biomechanical and/or physiological parameter values on the spot and sends it to a server component for further analyses. The classification of the data and generation of (immediate) feedback is based on expert knowledge (sport scientists) and can be adapted to sports specifically.

Version 1.0 of the Mobile Motion Advisor (MMA) – also funded by Sparkling Science – has been successfully completed in August 2012, involving the development of wireless sensor networks, sensor data transmission, (manual) feedback generation and data visualisation routines as well as the design of an appropriate web platform. Based on the initial implementation phase and the so far obtained results, the main focus of the extended version (2.1) concerns the optimization of the developed system, including the:

• Optimization of the existing modules (regarding usability and performance) • Development and integration of model-based intelligent agents for real-time data analysis and the generation of automatic feedback • Evaluation of real-time feedback effects generated during physical activities • Optimization of feedback messages by examining psychological aspects of wordings and phrases • Development of further wireless sensors • Research/development of alternative/new modules following an open innovation strategy

In contrast to standard project implementation and management procedures, the present target is to pursue an “Open Innovation” approach which shall promote the students’ creativity and their own ideas. For such reasons, the specification phase of the project has been split up into two parts. Phase one includes a variety of sub goals and objectives. However, instead of specifying exact details regarding the execution of the tasks, a number of well-defined “work packages” shall be specified and provided online via an e-learning web platform, which shall also include a discussion forum. In this way, students all over Austria who are willing to join the project team can make proposals on how they would solve a specific task they are interested in, allowing them to submit their solutions via the “open innovation web platform”.

In the subsequent phase two, a committee consisting of leading project coordinators and teachers will discuss and pick out the most innovative, creative and purposeful submissions for the project. At the end of the specification phase, the dependencies between different work packages shall be recognized, discussed and matched with all project members – simultaneously resulting in a timetable regarding the implementation phase.
The work packages have been divided in “basis modules” and “extension modules” in order to ensure that all necessary components will be developed. While the “basis modules” will be implemented by our exclusive school partners and research employees of the Centre for Sport Science and University Sports (the main responsibilities have been divided in preliminaries), the “extension modules” can be developed by any interested students.

This project has been completed.