JPH07192158A - Ball equipped with resonator and discriminating device for ball - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide a discriminating device which can discriminate a ball electrically without contact by embedding the LC resonator in the ball, and a ball which is used for the discriminating device. CONSTITUTION:The LC resonator (L2 and C1) which resonates to a specific frequency is embedded in the center part of the ball. This golf ball 1 when passing a specific position is electromagnetically coupled with the discriminating device side, and the ball ID of the golf ball 1 is known on the discriminating device side. Namely, a system shown by (A) makes a data communication between an antenna (discriminating device) side and the golf ball and obtains the ball ID from the IC in the golf ball 1. A system shown by (B), on the other hand, detects the frequency that the LC resonance circuit in the golf ball 1 resonates to by scanning the frequency on the antenna side. This detection is performed by a resonance monitor circuit 3. This resonance frequency is detected to acquire the ID of the golf ball 1 corresponding to the frequency.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a golf ball, a bowling ball, a billiard ball and the like, which are widely used for sports and games and which pass a predetermined position in a certain scene. Further, the present invention relates to a ball identification device for identifying the ball by detecting the identification code (ID) assigned to the ball in a non-contact manner.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Generally, most golf balls have a white color, but a game has been devised by using balls grouped by dividing them into several groups. For example, in a hole-in-one game at a golf ball, golf balls are identified by color, and color identification sensors are placed on the tee and cups to determine which ball is hit by which tee and which cup is hit. Whether all the players are in the computer is monitored, even if multiple players play sequentially or simultaneously, their progress and score results can be accurately controlled.
I am able to monitor it.

Conventionally, when playing such a game, by winding a color tape around the outer circumference of the ball or applying color ink or the like on the outer circumference of the ball,
The color identification sensor was used to identify the ball.

[0004]

However, when the color identification sensor is used as described above, there is a problem that accurate detection cannot be performed when the ball is dirty or the outer surface is scratched, and in the case of a golf ball, it is white. Other than that, there is a problem that it becomes difficult to visually recognize at a long distance.

An object of the present invention is to provide an identification device capable of electrically non-contact identification of a ball by embedding an LC resonator inside the ball, and a ball used in the identification device. To do.

[0006]

The ball according to the present invention comprises:
An LC resonator that resonates at a specific frequency is embedded in the center.

Another ball according to the present invention is L
Mainly includes a C resonator, a control unit that performs data communication with the outside by electromagnetic coupling in the LC resonator, and a ball identification code storage unit that stores a ball identification code transmitted during data communication with the outside. It is characterized by being buried in the section.

Further, the ball identifying device of the present invention comprises an antenna section for detecting the ball by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator of the ball, the antenna section comprising an oscillating section,
A frequency varying unit that varies the frequency oscillated by the oscillating unit and outputs it as an output signal to the electromagnetic coupling unit, and a resonance monitoring circuit that monitors the voltage of the output signal and detects the resonance state of the LC resonator of the ball electromagnetically coupled. And a ball identification unit that identifies the ball based on the frequency when the resonance state of the LC resonator of the ball is detected by changing the frequency of the output signal by the frequency variable unit. .

Further, an antenna section for detecting the ball by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator of the ball is provided, and the antenna section performs data communication with the ball and stores it in the identification code storage section of the ball. It is characterized by comprising a ball identification unit for receiving the generated ball identification code and identifying the ball.

[0010]

In the ball identifying device according to the present invention, when the ball approaches the antenna section, the antenna section and the LC resonator in the ball are electromagnetically coupled. At that time, if the resonance frequency of the LC resonator of the ball is the same as the frequency oscillated from the identification device, the electrical state of the electromagnetic coupling portion in the identification device changes, and the resonance of the ball is detected by detecting this. You can know the resonance frequency of the vessel. This can be used to identify the ball.

That is, the oscillation frequency in the antenna section of the identification device is changed, and at the same time, the resonance monitor circuit monitors the voltage of the output signal. Then, when the oscillation frequency reaches the resonance frequency of the LC resonator of the ball electromagnetically coupled, the voltage should suddenly drop. Therefore, the frequency at that time is determined to be the resonance frequency of the LC resonator of the ball. To do. Therefore, if the balls are grouped at the resonance frequency of the LC resonator of each ball, the balls can be identified in a non-contact manner.

Further, by providing the LC resonator in the ball and a control section for performing data communication with the antenna section by electromagnetic coupling through the LC resonator, the control section controls the electromagnetic coupling with the antenna section. The ball ID can be transmitted to the antenna section of the identification device. In this case, the electric power in the ball can be obtained from the electromagnetic induction signal during electromagnetic coupling with the antenna section. Then, it is also possible to provide a capacitor for accumulating the electric power at that time. Since the ball does not have a built-in battery, it can be used semipermanently.

[0013]

1 is a partially cutaway view of a golf ball according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in the figure, the identification element 2 is embedded in the center of the golf ball 1. The identification element 2 is an LC resonator solidified with resin and is embedded at the exact center of the golf ball 1 so that the center of gravity of the ball does not deviate from the center. In a golf ball having a core provided at the center and the outer periphery of the core covered with hard rubber, the identification element 2 is provided inside the core.

FIG. 2 shows an electrical block diagram of the identification element 2. In the figure (A), LC is used as the identification element 2.
An IC chip type identification element in which an IC chip having a data transmission / reception function is connected to a resonator is shown, and FIG. 1B shows an LC resonance type identification element composed only of LC resonators that resonate at a specific frequency. ing.

A more detailed block diagram of the IC chip type identification element is shown in FIG. That is, the LC resonator includes the coil L2 and the capacitor C1, and the diode D1, the capacitor C2, and the constant voltage circuit 10 form a power supply unit. That is, in this power supply unit, the received power is rectified by the diode D1 to charge the capacitor C2, and the charge stored in the capacitor C2 is used as the transmission power and is also supplied for driving the control circuit 11 and the memory 12. The memory 12 stores the identification code (ball ID) of the golf ball 1, and the control circuit 11 includes a demodulator A including a waveform shaping unit.
Then, the received signal amplified to a certain level is processed, and the transistor Tr1 is used as a modulation transistor to convert the ball ID of the golf ball into a modulation signal and transmitted to the outside by the LC resonator. That is, in the IC chip type identification element shown in FIG. 3, the signal sent by electromagnetic coupling with the external ball identification device is rectified and smoothed and charged to obtain the operating power of the internal circuit. Therefore, this I
Since the C chip type identification element can perform data communication with the outside in a non-contact manner, the ball ID stored in the memory 12 is transmitted to the outside by data communication.

On the other hand, the LC resonance type identification element has only an LC resonator that resonates at a specific frequency. Therefore, as will be described later, the oscillation frequency is scanned in the ball identifying device, and the fact that the output voltage on the oscillation side decreases when the frequency reaches the resonance of the LC resonator of the ball is utilized to know the frequency at that time. By this, the resonance frequency of the ball, that is, the ball ID set corresponding to the resonance frequency
Identify.

4 (A) and 4 (B) respectively show the configuration of the antenna section when the IC chip type identification element is used as the identification element 2 and the antenna section when the LC resonance type identification element is used. The configuration is shown. In this embodiment, a ball identification device for identifying the golf ball by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator is called an antenna.

The antenna shown in FIG. 4 (A) is connected to the transmitting / receiving circuit 20 for performing communication by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator of the golf ball 1, and connected to the transmitting / receiving circuit 20.
It is connected to a control circuit 21 that controls transmission or reception of data (ball ID) and exchanges data with a host side (not shown), and is connected to a transmission line 23, and between the host side. The interface 22 is an interface for data transfer.

The antenna shown in FIG. 4B has a transmitter circuit 30 for transmitting a signal of a certain frequency and an oscillation for oscillating a predetermined frequency signal while being electromagnetically coupled to the LC resonator of the golf ball 1. The unit 31 detects the voltage of the output signal (the voltage across the coil L1), the frequency varying unit 32 that varies the frequency oscillated by the oscillating unit 31 and outputs it as an output signal to the electromagnetic coupling unit including the transmission circuit 30, A resonance monitoring circuit 33 that detects when the voltage drops below a certain level as a resonance state of the LC resonator of the golf ball 1 that is electromagnetically coupled, and is connected to the oscillation unit 31 and the resonance monitoring circuit 33. In addition to controlling these, the frequency variable unit 3
When the resonance monitoring circuit 33 detects a resonance state in the middle of changing the frequency of 2 continuously, the control circuit 34 including a ball identification means for identifying the golf ball based on the frequency oscillating at that time. It has and. The control circuit 34 transmits a transmission line 35 to a host controller (not shown).
Therefore, it is connected.

FIG. 5 shows the arrangement position of the antenna 2. As shown in the figure, an antenna 2 is provided so as to face the position where the golf ball 1 falls to the bottom of the hole and stops.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart showing the communication control operation between the antenna 2 and the golf ball 1 in the system in which the IC chip type identification element is embedded in the golf ball 1.

In this embodiment, the ball ID of the golf ball 1 can be read from the antenna 2 and the ball ID stored in the memory 12 of the golf ball 1 can be rewritten from the antenna 2. is there.

FIG. 6A shows the operation of the antenna 2. First, an operation of setting either a command for reading the ball ID from the golf ball 1 or a command for writing the ball ID is performed (n1). Then, the command transmission process is started (n2). That is, when writing the ball ID to the golf ball 1, a write command is transmitted, and when reading the ball ID, a read command is transmitted.

If there is no response to the transmitted command, the command transmission is repeated again, and this command transmission is repeated at regular intervals until a response is received. If there is a response from the golf ball 1, the reception process is performed in n4, and the process ends. In this case, if the command to be sent is a read command, the ball ID is included in the response.
Contains data. Therefore, in the reception process n4, the ball ID is read to identify the ball.

On the other hand, in the control unit in the IC chip of the golf ball 1, when the command sent from the antenna 2 side is received, the content of the command is judged and the process corresponding to the judged command is performed ( n6). And
A response is transmitted at n7 and the process returns to the original state. That is,
In the case of a read command, the ball ID is attached to the response and transmitted. This allows the antenna 2 side to read out the ball ID of the golf ball that has gone into the hole. When the command sent is a write command, the ball ID sent accompanying the write command is written (updated) in the memory 12 in the command processing step n6.

By the above operation, when the golf ball 1 comes to a predetermined position between the golf ball 1 and the antenna 2,
That is, in this example, when a hole is inserted, the ball ID can be read out in a non-contact state to identify the golf ball and the ball ID can be updated.

Next, the operation of the antenna in the system using the golf ball 1 in which the LC resonance type identification element is embedded will be described with reference to FIG.

As described above, when using the golf ball in which the LC resonance type identification element is embedded, the resonance frequency of the golf ball is searched for in the antenna 2 by scanning the transmission frequency. When the resonance frequency is searched for, the ball ID preset corresponding to the frequency is determined.

First, at n10, the frequency at which scanning is started is set. This is performed by setting the setting state of the frequency variable unit 32 in FIG. 4B to an appropriate value. Then, the scan is started (n11). The frequency scan can be realized by continuously changing the frequency division ratio when the frequency changing unit 32 is composed of a frequency dividing circuit. In n12 to n14, the scan frequency is gradually increased, and the frequency signal is continuously transmitted until the predetermined scan end frequency is reached. In this routine, the resonance monitoring circuit 33 monitors the voltage of the output signal of the transmission circuit 30. Figure 8
(A) and (B) are characteristics of the LC resonator of the golf ball 1 when the frequency is scanned (resonance frequency-voltage characteristics).
And the change characteristic of the oscillation waveform voltage (output voltage). Now, when the resonance frequency of the LC resonator of the golf ball 1 and f _O3, resonance voltage of the LC resonator as shown in FIG. 8 (A) is rapidly increased when the frequency of the antenna side becomes f _O3 . At the same time, the voltage of the oscillation waveform decreases as shown in FIG. Therefore, by monitoring the oscillation waveform voltage by the resonance monitoring circuit 33 while scanning the frequency, the resonance state of the LC resonator of the golf ball 1 occurs with respect to the control circuit 34 when the voltage drops. Send a signal as a thing. The control circuit 34
At that time, since the frequency controlled by the frequency varying unit 32 can be known, the golf ball 1 having the LC resonator having the resonance frequency can be identified. Therefore, golf balls having different resonance frequencies can be identified. References n15 and n16 indicate the processing at that time. That is, when the resonance frequency is detected, the control circuit 34 determines the ball ID of the golf ball 1 corresponding to the frequency.
Then, the ball ID is output to the external host controller via the transmission line 35.

As shown in FIG. 8, the golf ball 1
The reason why the oscillating waveform voltage decreases when the LC resonator resonates is that the mutual impedance between the coils L1 and L2 on the antenna side increases at the time of resonance.

In the system using the IC chip type identification element shown in FIG. 4A, it is necessary to use a non-volatile memory as a memory of the IC chip in the golf ball. Also,
When the write command can be used as in the above embodiment, the nonvolatile memory must be a rewritable type memory. By doing so, the ball ID of the golf ball can be set and changed to any value at any time, and moreover, in the system using the golf ball of the LC resonance type identification element shown in FIG. 4 (B). By comparison, it becomes possible to set a very large number of ball IDs.

The ball in which the IC chip type identification element shown in FIG. 4A is embedded does not necessarily need to have a charging capacitor inside. If the control unit is operated by the received power when electromagnetically coupled to the antenna side, the capacitor for charging becomes unnecessary.

In the above embodiments, the golf ball was used as an example of the ball, but as another embodiment, the present invention can be applied to a ball used for billiard, bowling, gate ball and the like. Regarding balls used for billiards, it is conceivable to embed an LC resonator having a resonance frequency corresponding to the number of each ball in the ball.
In a bowling ball, an LC resonator having a resonance frequency corresponding to the number of the user of the ball can be embedded. Since these balls always pass through the prescribed positions (holes where balls fall when playing billiards, return paths where balls return when playing bowling), an antenna is attached to this part to identify the ball. Will be possible.

[0034]

According to the present invention, each ball can be identified in a non-contact manner without wrapping a tape on the surface of the ball or painting a color. Since the surface of the ball is not modified at all, no malfunction occurs, and since it is not necessary to provide a battery inside the ball, the ball can be used semipermanently. Also, L
A ball in which only the C resonator is embedded can be manufactured at an extremely low cost and does not cause any problem in mass production. Further, a large number of ball IDs can be assigned to a ball in which the IC chip type identification element is embedded.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a partially cutaway view of a golf ball according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2A and 2B are configuration diagrams of an IC chip type identification element and an LC resonance type identification element, respectively.

FIG. 3 is a detailed block diagram of an IC chip type identification element.

4A and 4B are respectively an antenna side configuration diagram of a system using a golf ball having an IC chip type identification element embedded therein, and a system using a golf ball having an LC resonance type identification element embedded therein. The block diagram of the antenna side of is shown.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an arrangement position of an antenna.

6A and 6B respectively show an operation on the antenna side and an operation on the ball side in a system using a golf ball incorporating an IC chip type identification element.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing an operation on the antenna side in a system using a golf ball having an LC resonance type identification element built therein.

8A and 8B are resonance voltage characteristics of an LC resonator in a golf ball when the frequencies are scanned,
The change characteristic of the oscillation waveform on the antenna side is shown.

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A ball characterized in that an LC resonator that resonates at a specific frequency is embedded in the center. 2. An LC resonator, a control section for performing data communication with the outside by electromagnetic coupling in the LC resonator, and a ball identification code storage for storing a ball identification code transmitted at the time of data communication with the outside. A ball characterized in that a part and a part are embedded in the center part. 3. An antenna section for detecting the ball by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator of the ball according to claim 1, wherein the antenna section varies an oscillation section and a frequency oscillated by the oscillation section. A frequency variable section that outputs an output signal to the electromagnetic coupling section, a resonance monitoring circuit that monitors the voltage of the output signal and detects the resonance state of the LC resonator of the ball that is electromagnetically coupled, and the frequency variable section that outputs the output signal. A ball discriminating device comprising: a ball discriminating unit which discriminates a ball based on the frequency when the resonance state of the LC resonator of the ball is detected by changing the frequency. 4. An antenna unit for detecting the ball by electromagnetically coupling with the LC resonator of the ball according to claim 2, the antenna unit performing data communication with the ball to identify the ball. A ball identification device comprising a ball identification unit that receives a ball identification code stored in a code storage unit and identifies the ball.