Kalasag: Development of Smartfoam for an Arnis Electronic Scoring System

Electronic scoring systems in combat sports aim to ensure fair and objective scoring by using wearable electronics to detect impacts on valid body parts, reducing human error. This technology has been successfully integrated into protective gear in sports like Olympic Fencing and Taekwondo. This study focuses on developing a low-cost electronic scoring system for Arnis, the national sport of the Philippines. The proposed system uses a Smartfoam architecture with an RFID-based proximity sensor and a Velostat-based thin film impact sensor. To evaluate the system, a stationary test bed simulated a sparring match between two Arnis athletes. The test, repeated three times, measured the accuracy of hit validation by comparing detected hits to actual valid hits. The system achieved a high accuracy rate of 99%. The few missed hits were attributed to issues with the RFID reader and tags in the Smartfoam and Arnis stick. Thus, the study recommends further experiments to optimize the RFID components for better performance.