Intelligent health and sport: An interplay between flexible sensors and basketball

Basketball, as one of the most popular sports in the world, has millions of followers and massive economic value. Basketball evolves so fast that it requires teams with smarter strategies, better skills, and stronger players. However, the competition strategies and training methods in basketball are still experience-based, lacking precise data to drive for more efficient training and strategies. On the other hand, flexible sensors, as a new class of sensors, have been a hotspot for scientific research and widely applied in various fields. Due to their excellent characteristics of flexibility, wearing comfort, convenience, and response speed, integrating flexible sensors into basketball has the potential to greatly promote all aspects of the sport. This paper aims to bring more fusion between basketball and flexible sensors. In this perspective, we first perform a review of the history of sensing technologies in the basketball sport and discuss mechanisms of flexible sensors applied on basketball players. Then specific scenarios for flexible sensors applied in basketball were elaborated on in detail. Finally, we envision the potential applications of flexible sensors in basketball and present our views on future development directions. We hope this paper can depict how flexible sensing technology is integrated into basketball systems and point out the future development of basketball with the help of flexible sensors.