Scientific understanding of sports performance have a multitude of advantages; such as improving technical or motor performance, devising efficient training protocols, optimising decision making skills and reducing injuries. The thesis reports a series of studies which utilizes state of the art motion capture and emerging virtual reality technology to (i) investigate technical aspects of goal kicking in rugby union and (ii) to examine decision making behaviour across cricket batters. The biomechanics of goal kicking in rugby union has received little attention in scientific literature owing to its importance, more so in a goal directed naturalistic setting. Within this aspect, the aim was to identify any common lower limb performance criterion's that existed across a sample of elite goal kickers which led to a successful performance. An increased ball speed, a higher hip angular velocity at ball impact, existence of hip and knee strategy to achieve similar levels of performance were identified. The conclusions have implications for adapting technology to goal kicking practise and future research. The second phase of the thesis described the development and application of a novel virtual reality cricket batting simulator. The simulator was applied to study decision making behaviour across cricket batters by feeding in realistic information. The kinematics of a fast bowling action was also evaluated independently as its understanding is central to how and when batter chose to perform. Elite batters were identified of perceptual and temporal components in context of advance information pick up and batswing behaviour that differed from their less capable peers. Comparable results from analogous studies indicated the strength of behavioral realism of the virtual reality batting simulator. Challenges of the simulator were also outlined in context to cricket batting. The conclusions have broader implications for virtual reality technology in movement coordination, perception action research and from an applied perspective
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:695328 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Dhawan, Aishwar |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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