New Electronic Combatant Sports Vest from ATM for Taekwondo Sports

ATM Sporthandel GmbH launches new Taekwondo vest, that will optimize the scoring and might save Taekwondo from loosing the olympic Status.
Sporting goods supplier ATM and sporting goods manufacturer Adidas are going to launch an electronic combatant sports competition vest in the first quarter of 2007. The new vest already found its way into the Olympic martial arts discipline taekwondo during the tests and is most probably going to be part of the Olympic summer games in Peking 2008. The totally new technology has been developed by the Atlantik Elektronik GmbH.
The vest itself is constructed as a means of body protection, which on one hand works as a punching zone for regular foot and hand punches and on the other hand prevents injuries by protecting the athletes from the impacts of hard hits. Totally new with this new system is the awarding of points for the mentioned techniques. It is no longer done by the referees, but works automatically through an integrated pneumatic system. The sensor system is also capable of differentiating between regular punches and forbidden techniques.