Design and Implementation of Push Pass Practice Support System for Field Hockey with Auditory Feedback

Field hockey is a popular global sport played with a stick and hard ball, in which stick manipulation is difficult. In field hockey, a push pass is the most basic and common pass to teammates. For the best push pass, the stick should stay in contact with the ball for a long time until it is released for the pass. However, it is difficult for beginners to perceive the contact point of the stick by themselves. This study proposed a system to enable the user hear the movement path of the contact position of the ball on the stick to improve the push pass technique. In the proposed system, eight pressure sensors are placed on a hockey stick. The system detects the contact path of the ball, and feedback sounds with different pitches depending on the contact positions of the piezoelectric speaker are produced in real time. According to the evaluation experiment conducted over a period of two months, the average distance of the movement path of the ball on the stick was significantly longer when the auditory feedback was provided than when it was not given. This confirms the effectiveness of auditory feedback utilizing the proposed system.