Australia Japan

It was 2005 when Dr. Daniel James made a visit to Japan to attend the Asia Pacific Congress on Sports Technology at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and a short budo tour. The conference was a good opportunity to present work on technology development to support elite athletes as well as indulging a personal intrest with a paper on measuring Japanese sword motion, after conducting a study on local aikido students and international instructors. At this conference that he was very fortunate to meet Dr. Yuji Ohgi from the prestigous Keio University. A former competative swimmer and coach they immediately discovered shared research intrest in measuring athletes using inertial sensors. Later it was discovered that they had had a chance to meet in Florida in 2002 at the IEEE Sensors conference where Dr Ohgi presented the first paper on monitoring swimmers using these sensors but thats another story. Yuji and Danny promised to visit each other again and some short exchanges followed in 2006 and 2007 with a few of their students visiting Brisbane and Fujisawa respectively. 

In 2007 Dr. James undertook a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science fellowship sponsored by Keio University and for Yuji and him to exchange ideas and begin to collaborate with on tangable projects of mutual intrest. One such project was the miniturisation of an athlete monitoring platform 

Late 2007 Joe Baker from the Queensland Academy of Sport brought to their attention the Australia Japan Foundation as an opportunity to formalise and deepen the relationship we were developing between Australia and Japan. It was the first chance to formalise the QAS and ARS as partners of the work and they were very fortunate to be selected for support in 2008. In all 5 exchanges took place between the respective institutions with several publications reporting the work together with a forthcoming book chapter in Digital Sport. 

Contributing significantly to a new technology development with partner ARS Japan, a Yokohama based hi-tech firm that Yuji had some projects with the exchanges were a great success. During this time a number of joint publications were written, with presentations taking place at Griffith University, the CHASE centre, University of the Sunshine Coast and at the Sports Medicine Australia Conference (with abstracts appearing in thier journal supplement) together with talks at some elite sports institutions and private companies interested in the work. In Japan presentations were made at Keio University, the Japan Institute of Sports Science and the JSME, Joint Symposium on Sports Engineering and Human Dynamics. The collaboration has reached maturity sufficient for host institutions Grififth University and Keio University to sign a Memorandum of Understanding alowwing the exchanges to continue. 

Both Yuji and Danny look forward to a bright future together, exhancing each other areas of endevour by bringing technology to sport in their respective workplaces. It is hoped that "Many Australians come from remote areas with limited access to elite training facilities. This wearable, low-cost technology will enable a wider pool of promising athletes to access support comparable to those in the city," Dr James said. after recently being awarded an ARC Linkage grant to further study the aplication of this kind of technology to swimmingmore info...

The trip also allowed Danny as a long time brisbane aikido practicioner to enjoy some aikido whilst in Japan
Recent Australia Japan exchanges have included Dr. David Rowlands, Dr. Andrew Wixted, Leno Koyanagi and Craig Lyndon with Dr. Andrew Busch planning a visit in 2009

Publications during the activities

Sports Medicine Australia 2008
The Development and Application of inertial Sensors for Sports Performance Assessment: Successes, Failures and Emerging Technologies. James, Ohgi
Deriving upper arm rotation from Vicon to enhance the first serve in tennis. Ahmadi, Rowlands, James. Winning a prize at the Sports Medicine Australia conference 
Swimming intra stroke metric identification using wrist mounted inertial sensors. Davey, James 

Japan Joint Symposium on Human Dynamics and Human Motion
A biofeedback  system for swing skill acquisition in implement sports James
Inducing the Intention Phenomenon in a Computer Based Simulation Environment, Rowlands, Cutmore, Au 

Books Chapter

Quantitative Assessment of Physical Activity Using Inertial Sensors, >Digital Sport for Performance Enhancement and Competitive Evolution: Intelligent Gaming Technologies. IGI press Daniel A. James, Andrew Busch, Yuji Ohgi
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