Portable Referee System for Volleyball Game Based on Pressure Monitoring and Self-Powering Communication

Abstract

Sports refereeing has traditionally relied on human judgement, which can be prone to errors. However, the development of automatic referee systems has the potential to address this issue, improve training, and promote sports in the future. In this study, we present a novel and portable referee system specifically designed for volleyball games, which utilizes piezoelectric sensors to detect pressure and simultaneously harvest energy for powering the system. The system consists of two parts: a wearable glove and a device mounted on the volleyball. The glove part has five sensors fixed on the fingertips and the volleyball has eight sensors evenly distributed on its surface. The collected contact data from the sensors is wirelessly transmitted to a personal computer. Our experimental results demonstrate that the system can accurately capture a three-second contact and detect foul actions in a volleyball game. These findings highlight the potential of the system for sports and other monitoring applications.