Nightside is a finalist in the Best application of test or data acquisition equipment category, for its development and integration of an effective high-speed image and data capture facility for OBO, provider of specialist gear for field hockey goalkeepers.
Nightside’s managing director, Peter Brown, says the nomination is a significant achievement for the New Zealand company, identifying the uniqueness and technical difficulty of the project.
“When OBO came to us, there were no known precedents within the sports equipment arena of companies putting a test facility of this nature in place. The award nomination goes a long way in validating the creativity and innovation of the project team,” he says.
In the last 15 years, the speed of balls being hit, thrown or bowled at players has increased exponentially as a result of the improving technologies in surfaces and materials in bats, racquets and hockey sticks.
To address this issue, the test laboratory was developed, equipped with a high-speed video camera and sensor equipment to capture and analyse the impact of balls shot by a high-pressure cannon at up to 160 km/h.
The shock attenuation of the impact is recorded frame by frame by a high-speed Mikrotron video camera and other sensors at over 2000 frames per second, allowing highly detailed analysis of the data and images around the impact zone.
“Until recently, similar testing has been limited to the automotive industry and the military sector,” says Brown.
Reuben Parr from OBO says the system has been successful to date in testing a range of helmets and masks from different sporting codes, including cricket, softball and field hockey.
Results have shown a large difference in the performance of different products and different materials. For example, polycarbonate face masks have proved to be far stronger than the steel-wire face masks currently used in a number of sporting codes.
