Design of the Electronic Target for Shooting Sports and Sensor Suitability Analysis

Abstract

Electronic scoring targets (ESTs) are designed to overcome the drawbacks of classic paper targets, particularly the inability to score individual hits in groups if they overlap and the time-consuming manual scoring process. This paper presents the design of a prototype of an acoustically based EST for 10m air pistol discipline and examines the suitability of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones and sealed flexural ultrasonic transducers (FUTs) as hit point localization sensors. The proposed prototype of the EST is mobile and battery-powered, with built-in illumination and radiofrequency communication. The position of the hit point is calculated using a closed-form, combined weighted method based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements. FUTs were used as sensors due to their filtering properties of shot and ambient noise and overall higher signal-to-noise ratio than MEMS microphones, without saturation of the output signal. The sensor positions for TDOA localization were accurately obtained using an iterative calibration method. The proposed EST prototype achieved a mean position error of 0.29 mm and a standard deviation of 0.19 mm for hit point localization.