The badminton future is on the way
If we can believe the experts we will get a second wave of corona in the autumn this year, but already now we see places lockdown again and they also say that it is not a question if it will happen again but when there will be a new pandemic hitting us.
We have to consider very seriously that our sport will never be the same anymore, because it is not looking good for many indoor sports but Badminton can be extra hard hit by this corona thing. The sport is already not very cheap if you do it right and it will not get less expensive with all the new rules, we have to find new ways to develop our sport and for this new thinking we don’t have to calculate on our oud fashion federations.
New grassroot organisations will have to stand up to make sure our sport will keep developing and I was not surprised to learn that a group of students in Asia is working on a virtual reality badminton game, I have been contacted by one of the students in this group because a couple of years ago I wrote a article about badminton in the future, a virtual reality room was one of the thing I then saw would happened in the next 20 to 30 years
It is a room with ½ a badminton court inside and you play against a player wherever in the World who is also in a room like this, you play against this player Online but with the real moves, strokes and tactics. Players are a member of the World Badminton Club (The WBC), it is a real time I-sport organisation and it’s has real has in a real club, tournament but without traveling. No expansive sport halls are needed, and at very little costs, every little town can have several badminton rooms where you can play Online competition or tournaments. Also your training and coaching will be done Online in the future and arguments will change, you will ask your coach why is Lin Dan doing it in another way than what you tell me right now? You can say OK we put on a disk of Lin Dan and you play against him and feel like what it is I mean.
I never thought I would be around when things like this would be developed and for sure NEVER EVER that I was going to be one of the advisors to make a game like this. But I’m also a little worried, it is again something that is coming from Asia. They pick up the idea to look into the development of a game like this which is a combination of isport and virtual reality. You would think it is a Wee game as we know already but it is not the same this game is going a lot further, in Wee you can just make a stroke and it doesn't matter how hard you hit or how you hold your tools (racket). In iBadminton you have a smart grip, the sensors detect what kind of grip you are holding your racket with and with what speed you are moving your arm. This will give you the stroke that you have in mind. Also this is not new, it is only an improved version of the racket speed sensors we have tried out in our badminton camp on Orø a couple of years ago.
What students at this moment are doing is bringing all these elements together to have a look if we can make a game that really can be an alternative to play badminton in real time. The development will be slow and we will not play games in this new situation next year and maybe not even in 5 years time. The development in the way that I see it will be first a kind of simulator where you can do technical training in a studio (and later at home) with your Wee like racket, this alone would already be great, you will get the same situation like there is already in golf where you can improve your swing with the censors, high speed cameras and super video analyses about you technique in all different strokes. It is not strange that we see this development in Asia. The badminton sport is very big in this part of the World and for many countries in Asia it is the only sport where they can win medals at the Olympic games. I think it is a pity that we don’t see development like this in/from Europe, it would be great to work together with technical universities across Europe to make the software of a program like this.
The funding is also important, it is very flattering to be asked to give advice as a coach to a game like this but it would be a lot better for the sport in Europe to come up with a development program like this and will be able to compete with Asia instead of following all the time.
In this corona time we have seen that the badminton sport did almost not stop in Asia, not on a lower level and for sure not on the top level. And evendow this was the case still they see the need to develop the sport whereby they don’t need to come together to do training or even play games in the hall. We are already behind in Europe and with this way of thinking in Asia we will even fall further behind, I would like to see a group of people supported by companies to start up a development program for our sport. Everybody is talking about closing the gap between Europe and Asia, but very little is done about it, and that is a pity.
Technical Universities, companies and other people who would like to contribute to this project are very welcome to contact me. [email protected]
