The concept that team sports clothing might do more than proclaim just what team you play for, is now a reality that is being put under trial tests in Australia.

Often one hears the saying that athletes often wear their hearts on their sleeves, but new sports jerseys developed at the University of Sydney will possibly also soon show their foul count and other relevant statistical data.

Although this innovation could find itself in many different team (and not only) sports environments, I decided to dedicate this week;s column to it as basketball is the sport being investigated right now. Turning to basketball enthusiasts, just try to imagine a basketball singlet that lights up to display a player’s points, fouls and how much time there is left in the match or even to shoot under 24 seconds!

TeamAwear (an acronym for Team Sports Awareness Wearable Display) is a next-generation basketball jersey which allows players to literally (if all operates according to the plan) ‘wear their performance’. In fact these vests, with electroluminescent displays which are really flexible, paper thin and non-breakable , have the capacity to enhance the awareness of information and understanding of a team sport during game-play for all the involved stakeholders, be they athletes, coaches, referees and/or spectators, without negatively disturbing its game-play.

Honours student Mitchell Page (a bachelor of design computing undergraduate) has used cutting-edge wearable technology to make basketball uniforms a mine of information – updating and displaying in real-time a player’s fouls, score and even the amount of time left in a game.

“Team sports clothing already acts as a form of communication, about identity and position and team and sponsors,” Mr Page says. “Maybe it can also eventually carry statistics and information about the game itself.”

He has built four prototype jerseys that he says helped players keep track of games and perform better and increased spectators’ enjoyment and engagement.

He predicts that such technology could transform the way sports are played on the field, and even use the players as billboards for video advertising at half-time.

Mitchell Page came up with the idea while playing certain computer sports games which use graphics and icons to tie statistics to the virtual players and track their performance. He wondered how such on-screen graphics in sports telecasts could be made available to players and spectators at the ground.

Together with his supervisor, Dr Andrew Vande Moere, he came up with the TeamAwear system. They chose to try the concept on basketball because of its amount of fast-changing data such as points, fouls, statistics and time limits.

Players strap on a small computer the size of two decks of cards, which then wirelessly connects to a courtside computer that updates the game statistics in real time.

Electricity-carrying cotton thread weaves through the shirt from the computer to flexible panels in the jersey. Page used a type of conductive thread which is normally used in the sport of fencing to detect when the sword has touched/made contact with another player. Technically, what Page actually did is sew an electrical circuit into the fabric itself, so that the jersey is almost like a computer circuit. However the sewing was done with just a regular sewing machine and all the displays were sewn into little vinyl plastic pouches so that they could be easily removed to wash the vest after a game.

The latter display panels then use electro-luminescence, a brightly-glowing technology previously used in advertising displays or on T-shirts worn by ravers at dance parties.

User studies revealed that any sort of display containing text would be too confusing both for the players themselves and also for the spectators on the sidelines as they would have trouble reading it. Basketball is a really fast paced game, so to be able to stop and read a series of text or numbers was quite out of the question.

Thus the displays are basically colour-coded and arranged in intuitive patterns. Panel lines on the shoulder of the shirt indicate a player’s foul count. Luminescent bars running up the side of a vest indicate the points scored by each player and chest panels light up when either one minute of game time remains, or else there 10 seconds left on the 24 second shot clock. A panel on the back lights up on the shirts of the winning team.

“Results were extremely positive,” Page told New Scientist. “We found that spectators benefited the most – understanding and even enjoying the game a whole lot more than usual…..(TV) spectators have all sorts of complex on-screen graphics and charts or graphs. We just wanted to empower local spectators present at the game itself with this same information.”

Why did Page select basketball to test his invention? He admits that basketball is a relatively low contact sport (when compared to Australia’s other favourites namely Aussie rules’ football and American football style), so the damage to any prototype vest design would be essentially low. Also basketball is played over a small playing field and thus the visibility of a display would be enhanced. Another factor is that basketball is also a very strategy-based game, in terms of team aspects, so that players need to be aware of how other players are fending and how the opposition is doing in order to make the right decisions. All these factors lead Page to believe that his invention would benefit basketball greatly as it was a game that could be well augmented with information.

Page believes football, soccer, volleyball, netball, cricket and boxing could all benefit from similar outfits.