Equine Speedometers 123
Makarand writes "According to this article in The New Zealand Herald
scientists at Massey University (NZ) are using
GPS to
monitor racehorses during their training programme. GPS technology is being used to follow horses around a racetrack and measure how far and fast horses gallop each day. This GPS data along with heart rate measurements is transforming racehorse training into a science."
What an overkill (Score:2, Insightful)
Now GPS help the horse race business go even higher tech. As if fantasy football and internet slot machine wasn't enough.
Re:What an overkill (Score:2, Insightful)
Now not only do people destroy their family life savings with horse racing.
Now GPS help the horse race business go even higher tech. As if fantasy football and internet slot machine wasn't enough.
I hope this was meant to be funny. Because it sure smacks of the modern American practice of never taking responsibility for one's own actions. Just because a few people can't or won't control their own impulses, I am supposed to be "protected from myself" with draconian regulations. And to top it all off th
Re:What an overkill (Score:1)
My God man! Take a deep breath.
There... Feel Better?
I suppose my two points: 1) I have little sympathy for "victims" of gambling adiction and 2) I hope training horses can be made safer for them were a bit hidden and obscure.
All I know is that I don't personally gamble on horse races (or greyhound races for that matter) but, as someone who used to enjoy racing my "pet" horse as a child, I do enjoy watching such magnificent creatures
New Tech? (Score:2)
Re:New Tech? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New Tech? (Score:1)
I think its a very well thought-out design.
GPS being able to monitor heart rate and rate-of-speed changes and distance travelled. Very Very useful for making decisions on training and work load especially if you monitor many horses through a web-based interface.
Updates for "the Track" (Score:3, Interesting)
Next time we are at the racing track will we see m.p.h real-time as the race progresses?
AC
And cameras! (Score:2)
Re:Updates for "the Track" (Score:1)
Some more info (Score:1, Informative)
I am not supposed to tell you this: but given that GPS is not that cheap, the locals are considering switching to some 802.11b application that can track locations via triangulation, so if there are any enterprising slashdotters reading this, let it be known that we would pay quite nicely for a low-overhead solution!
Contact me at mark@pobox.com if you think you q
Re:Some more info (Score:1)
Re:Some more info (Score:2)
Re:Some more info (Score:2)
units (Score:3, Funny)
Re:units (Score:2)
By the time you capture the data to a file, a simple spreadsheet could convert the data to almost any format you wish. It could even convert to the percent of the speed of light so you could figure how much red or blue shift there was. I wouldn't want to be wrong choosing the winner because of the color shift.
Horse racing will be a true science... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Horse racing will be a true science... (Score:3, Funny)
OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, a GPS can determine the horse's position on Earth accurately on very small intervals (say, 0.1 seconds). This data can be analyzed to determine the horse's near-instantaneous speed and acceleration at many points throughout the horse's workout.
Further
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, they've got great precision. Accuracy, on the other hand...
If you hild a normal (consumer-grade) GPS unit in your hand and stand still, you'll be surprised to find that you're bouncing around like an ADD-ridden five-year-old after eating a bag of Skittles. "I'm here! No, I'm over there! Now I'm 20 feet away and 10 feet underground! Wow!"
Consumer-grade GPS isn't hyper-accurate. Car na
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:2)
Add differential correction to it. That fixes the problem. Most consumer handheld GPS units will accept a signal from a differential receiver. However the receivers may cost several times the cost of the hand held GPS receiver.
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:1)
I don't train horses, I train bicycle racers. The horsie people might the advantage of horses being a bit smarter and less argumentative.
A measured course, a stopwatch, a video camera and a heartrate monitor in the hands of a trained observer is 99.9999% of the way there.
Of course with all the money involved with horse racing a few more significant digit
Re:OK maybe I'm just stupid... (Score:1)
Or would you rather have all of that information automatically entered and graphs and charts automatically at your fingertips 24-7?
Imagine how many more horses you could train if you had a system where you didn't have to waste time individually with each horse but could tell an apprentice to go do X, based on information on your computer.
Re:automatically entered and graphs and charts (Score:2)
Some data gathered by GPS simply can't be captured by hand to manualy enter. NMEA output from GPS receivers give speed, direction, position, and other data once a second. Acceleration is easly calculated. Try that with a pencil and a stopwatch.
The last thing I need... (Score:1)
Not suprised (Score:1, Informative)
15 year old tech (Score:4, Interesting)
These systems haven't become very widespread because of their cost... and even if we can make them really cheap, I'm not so sure what use it'll have. It's probably interesting to know a horse is running at x km/h, with a heart rate of y and blood pressure z, but what are you going to do with that information?
Track training effectiveness (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically you would do the same thing the edurance athletes have been doing for a while. Since we know that certain heart rates correspond to aerobic or anaerobic exercise, you can make sure that the horse is training aerobically or anaerobically. Also using a heart rate monitor allows you to figure out if the horse is overtraining. With people, overtraining leads to elevations in their resting heart rates and problems in getting your heart rate up while exercising. I'm sure there are analogs in horse
Re:15 year old tech (Score:3, Interesting)
There are two related uses for the information; First to weed out horses that are 'sub par' early on in their training process. Secondly to identify potential studs and dams that may be visually ind
Re:15 year old tech (Score:2)
DerekLyons wrote:
There are two related uses for the information; First to weed out horses that are 'sub par' early on in their training process. Secondly to identify potential studs and dams that may be visually indistinquishable or 'sub par', yet have valuable breeding characteristics.
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Any trainer or jockey worth his or her salt can function at least as well as this GPS system
Re:15 year old tech (Score:2)
For track racing, I wouldn't know. I'm not a fan of the track racing industry as there is too much abuse associated with it.
And yes, I do have my own saddle (obscure ST:TNG refere
Re:15 year old tech (Score:2)
Was it a device carried by the horse? If so, then the key question is "How much did it weigh?"
Re:15 year old tech (Score:2)
Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:4, Interesting)
Look it up. The horse was preternatural... with a heart more than DOUBLE the size of a typical champion thoroughbred...
When he won the Kentucky Derby in '73, Secretariat ran each successive quarter-mile FASTER than the previous one... this is simply unheard of in horse-racing...
A genetic zenith.
Can't clone it (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:1)
That's a lot of chow. [alpo.com]
Re:Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:1)
Look up any racing program, and you will find that 90% (if not more) of the horses run on Lasix. One of the functions of Lasix is that it an be used to mask other chemicals. Now, how can you then trust that any results are won fair and square?
I don't know if still goes on, but I believe that racing in the state of New York it was allowed to
Re:Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:1)
However, EVERYTHING I've ever read or studied about Secretariat, has consistently remarked upon just how clean an animal he was. He was not doped. I encourage you to read further about thi
Re:Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:1)
I have to disagree. What make American racing unappealing to me is that it specifically allows doping like Lasix (and I think Bute in New York).
Don't get me wrong, I think that in any sport anywhere that involve lots of money there will always be someone that try to cheat. However, when the sports ruling body say that it is allowed to cheat (Lasix a
Re:Obligatory Secretariat comment... (Score:1)
This technology exists for humans too (Score:4, Informative)
Why GPS? Some links (Score:1)
I'm unclear as to why they chose GPS. Surely the same result could be achieved used a terrestrial or local area wireless sensor system set up around the track.
The article mentions the problem of speeds differing depending on the start gate, and improved accuracy of GPS is within "a few metres" which is accurate enough. "Good enough" is a long-standing principle in technology deployments but it's not very clear from the article what specific advantage GPS has over other systems beyond the obvious.
This li
Re:Why GPS? Some links (Score:1)
Importance of GPS, & questions on its Reliabil (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe several posters hit an important point when they stated that they have been able to measure a horse's speed for years using stopwatches. However, they should consider that this technology is only as useful as the person pressing the button, and relies on the user to be able to determine *exactly* when that horse's nose touches the line, and for them to be able to press the stop button fast enough. This tool is extremely handy because, assuming it has great accuracy, it takes the human error problem out. You might not think that parts of a second would matter in horse racing, but it does. Fractions of a second came between breaking Secretariats (famous race horse) track record, and not. It is true that they have bream beams at the major tracks, but overall photo technology is used to determine split seconds, who won, etc., and often this is not available to trainers outside of a race. GPS will simplify that process.
However, my concern is that, having used this technology in a robot that we are working on, the readings are sometimes unreliable as one second it may say you are one place, and the next tell you that you are a foot the other way. That might not seem like a huge distance to you, but combine that with the 30+ mph galloping speed of a well-trained thoroughbred, and you have a problem when it reads the horse as finishing when it really has not. I would be interested in seeing how they address this problem. In horse racing, when gauging against track records, split seconds count!
I believe that a greater application of this technology would be to track those expensive animals in the case that they get stolen. They have been using a variant of RFID to do this for years, but it is limited in distance and thus rarely actually catches animals except at slaughterhouses where they are required to scan for a stolen animal. This might ease an insurance company's mind, and also the owner's, knowing that their animal can be tracked in-transit. Awesome.
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:3, Interesting)
This is what to expect with an autonomous GPS unit like the cheap $200 hand-held units you can get from Garmin or Magellan.
There are surveyor grade differential GPS units that have sub-centimeter accuracy.
The way these work is you first need to survey a position, in this case how about the center of the infield, to find its exact coordinates. You then set up a b
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps they should look into using units similar to your own. I am familiar with differential GPS and have used it, not finding it accurate enough for our liking, but I have never tried the surveyor grade ones, nor am I familiar with them. The units that we
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:2)
Precise measurements are more important when running in circles (close proximity, lots of direction change.) However, in larger patterns (field riding,) the GPS unit would have more space to average over.
Besides, precise, accurate measurements are more important during a race than when training.
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:1)
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:1)
There is nothing about the hardware that should be expensive except that the current market is incredibly small, so all research costs must be spread over a very small user population.
The Corp of Engineers have fixed DGPS base stations in certain areas that can be u
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:1)
I flew GPS satellites for the AF for about 8 years, and taught it as a AETC instructor for about 3 of those 8. So you can consider me a Subject Matter Expert :-)
Anyway, DGPS and GLONASS (the Soviet Union's equiv to GPS) lead to the DoD turning off Selective Availability (SA), which degraded GPS to about a hundred meters. There are two signals sent down (L1 and L2) with Precisio
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:1)
Did you RTFA? Are we supposed to be expecting a Darwinesqe award from someone who stole a million dollar horse and forgot to leave the GPS unit behind?
Hint: Read
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:1)
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:2)
Why not just use that technology which is available off the shelf?
Re:Importance of GPS, & questions on its Relia (Score:2)
Two words: size, convenience
Now, an explanation:
I am fairly certain that the boxes put in NASCAR cars are large and heavy, insofar as I can remember. I suppose that, when dealing with cars, size was not a concern. A device inside the car doesn't really reduce aerodynamics or increase the relative weight that much. The same is not true for placing
Science? (Score:2)
Re:Science? (Score:2)
Been a science for years (Score:2, Offtopic)
Like most sports/races, it's been a science for decades. it's called doping. I guarantee the money that is spent on doping research(and both the technology to test for said drugs as well as the technology to skirt testing) will always pale in comparison to the money spent on GPS units, laptops, and database programs.
Doping is almost at crisis levels in the world of sports; it's rampant. What's pathetic i
Hook up a cantenna... (Score:3, Funny)
Precision? (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Precision? (Score:2)
Not a problem. If you have drift, the reading could be that far off. Drift is slow. Races are fast. Who cares if the position data has drifted off 15 feet? You are not using the GPS to find the finish line. Even with the drift, the speed data is usualy quite good. My owners manual states the speed accuracy as 0.1 nautical mile. (MPH but using Nautical miles, not US miles) Second to second speed accurate to about 0.1 MPH is usualy better than you can do with a stopwa
Science (Score:1)
Yes, because as everybody knows, anything that involves measuring something instantly becomes 'science.'
Goodness, that comment is going to get all the statistics freaks upset.
Hah! (Score:2, Funny)
Margin for error (Score:1)
I just don't see that this is feasible to the degree of accuracy trainers and most owners will require.
you can try this out yourself... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:you can try this out yourself... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a Timex HRM that isn't really all that great, and the watch is bulky and not so great (the band is a fabric material and smells bad as it fills with sweat - takes some time to dry out too). But all in all, it suits my needs. I would rather have a Polar, but they cost much more (for good reason, they are high quality) - and I don't really need all that much.
I also ha
Blinded me with science (Score:2)
In other news, GPS technology is also transforming aeronautics and navigation into a science, at long last...
Oh, wait, it already was. And so was racehorse training. Just ask any of the veterinarians who've worked in that field for 30 years or so (like my father).
EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. (Score:1)
Galileo Leaflet [eu.int]
Unfortunately I think tunnel vision (just like a horse !) defence issues will prevail over the potential money to be made from extremely accurate geolocation technology. And boy there is a lot of money to be made here - 200 Billion according to EU estimates.
And before I get modeed as a Troll - Terrorists don't need accurate telemetry. When a bomb
Re:EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. (Score:1)
Huh? Horses have a 350 degree range of vision
Re:EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. (Score:1)
Re:EU Galileo should offer even more accuracy. (Score:2)
Bah... (Score:1)
What? Oh...
Privacy issues =:-) (Score:1)
Ugh... (Score:2)
overkill? (Score:2)
Plus I thought commercially available GPS was only accurate to aabout + or - 3 meters (or 3 feet ~= 1 meter? something like that...).
And how much of an advantage would that be to knowing the track length and counting the number of laps? Oh well... I guess people are lazy.
Re:overkill? (Score:1)
Re:overkill? (Score:2)
That's great, but ... (Score:1)
car (Score:1)
Re:car (Score:2)
Me too. I don't have to have it re-calibrated each time I change tires. No more speeding tickets just because the big tires make the speedomoter read low.
like they do with gliders... (Score:2)
privacy issues? (Score:4, Funny)
I beg to differ (Score:2)
They're transforming it into a statistical exercise.
Well yeah, but so what? (Score:1)
We Were Doing This Years Ago! (Score:2)
At my family's bicycle store [bikeworld.com], we have a shop dog [bikeworld.com] named Macy, who is a labrador mix. Macy is getting old now but back in his prime, he loved to pull people around on a skateboard. Some of the braver employees would put a harness on the dog and take a longboard out behind the shop and let him run. It was unreal how fast this dog could run. One of the guys came up with an idea for clocking Macy's top speed: the GPS. Using a Garmin eMap, we clocked them at 28mph. At this speed, the board began to get unst
Wireless System at Hong Kong Jockey Club (Score:1)
"Each jockey will have a small transponder tag placed in their helmet. As they pass one of the 31 strategically placed radio frequency receivers on the racetrack, their location will be calculated to within 10 centimeters."
Re:GPS and Cars (Score:1, Offtopic)
If they can use GPS to estimate the speed of horses, then the same techology can be easily used to estimate the speed of cars.
This especially becomes more interesting as GPS becomes common in cars... it could easily be one more example of how big brother enters our lives.
Gesh.
Davak
Re:GPS and Cars (Score:2)
Re:GPS and Cars (Score:1)
Re:big brother (Score:2)
Big brother is a factor if you take the information from your GPS receiver and re-transmit it to someone else. On-Star is noted for this using a cell phone connection. The Toyota Prius GPS is not noted for this as the GPS receiver feeds the on-board map unit and is not sent off to 3rd parties. The same thing is true for my hand held GPS I use hiking. I would
Re:GPS and Cars (Score:1)
Re:happy birthday for my bro dan (Score:1)