I please need a golf-related software program developed to accurately determine a rotation point location along the length of a golf club under specific club movement conditions. In a nutshell, the movement takes place before a swing even begins, where a rotation of the club is commonly performed by a golfer that creates a point along the length of the club. In essence it divides the length of the club into two sections. The point location can vary significantly from golfer to golfer and is a crucial measurement that needs to be found.
At first thought it would seem to be a comparatively easy task because the club movement occurs before a swing even starts. But club movements during the period can be extremely small and subtle for some clubs and/or golfers, so much so that they are barely noticeable unless specifically looking for them. Furthermore, the entire club as a whole is generally moved around during the period, so the rotation point location does too. This makes it more difficult to track and determine the rotation point location needed for a golfer (along the plane that club weight is sensed).
Nevertheless, with appropriate skills one should be able to form such a program pretty well. Various attempts have been made in the past, the earliest ones using an inertial-type sensor(s). But sensor reading drifting issues toward determining club positions were a major issue. (An entire pre-swing period from start to finish, over which numerous relevant club movements [waggles] are often individually made [and each can vary some] and separated by short inactive periods, can last upwards of 10 seconds or more. However, measuring just a single representative waggle is generally less than a second, and with the most relevant portion of the waggle being even less than that.)
Another attempt(s) was using video, video frames, and computer vision (only 2D video is fundamentally required). Simple conspicuous tracking markers were placed on the club to be measured, and apparently some type of artificial intelligence was applied. But the contractor(s) could really not even come close to tracking the markers and determining any kind of usable rotation point location. To the best of my recollection, programming languages such as R (visually nice but unusable in other manners), C, and Python have been used at various times.
Beyond fundamentally needing to find accurate rotation point locations for golfers, a video-type application "might" provide additional information that may be more useful for helping users of and further developing the actual application. But I am not really certain of that right now.
Results have been so poor and inaccurate among efforts to this point that I am still unable to even positively prove whether certain concepts are correct yet. In view of this I am still essentially at a prototyping stage. So I am still in need a very rudimental version of such an application next, one that can be produced in a manner and with hardware/software components ideally most efficient from time and cost standpoints yet hopefully provide some decent results to finally get to analyze.
My budget will remain quite small for the project unless and until certain elements are proven well first, and then I can take things from there toward commercialization hoped for. Additional details are available regarding documentation of past attempts and the good and bad of those along with more of what is needed for a next attempt. With various IP rights in play, an NDA will likely be required in order for me to release most additional details.
I am open to considering project or hourly rates. Please feel free to throw any questions or comments my way, as I could have easily missed one or more things of a very basic nature that might be needed for your consideration. Thanks. I appreciate it.
