The ability of "looking into the future"-namely, the capacity of anticipating future states of the environment or of the body-represents a fundamental function of human (and animal) brains. A goalkeeper who tries to guess the ball's direction; a chess player who attempts to anticipate the opponent's next move; or a man-in-love who tries to calculate what are the chances of her saying yes-in all...

Penalty takers in association football adopt either a keeper-independent or a keeper-dependent strategy, with the benefits of the keeper-independent strategy presumed to be greater. Yet, despite its relevance for research and practitioners, thus far no method for identifying penalty kick strategies has been available. To develop a validated and reliable method, Experiment 1 assessed characteris...

The aims of this study were (i) to compare water polo game-related statistics by game outcome (winning and losing teams) and margins of victory (close games, unbalanced games, and very unbalanced games), and (ii) to identify characteristics that mark the differences in performances for each group of margin of victory. The game-related statistics of the 308 men's matches played in seven Internat...

Objectives: To examine the effects of multimodal and individualised self-regulation strategies upon emotions and bodily symptoms of athletes’ psychobiosocial state and performance, within the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) framework. Design: A multiple baseline single-subject design. Method: Eight male high-level Italian athletes (four goalkeeper roller-skating hockey players an...

opportunity for integrated robotics research. In particular, robot players in a soccer game must recognize and track objects in real time, navigate in a dynamic field, collaborate with teammates, and strike the ball in the correct direction. All these tasks demand robots that are autonomous (sensing, thinking, and acting as independent creatures), efficient (functioning under time and resource ...

Middle-sized robot soccer competition provides an excellent opportunity for distributed robotic systems. In particular, a team of dog-sized robot players must perform real-time visual recognition, navigate in a dynamic field, track moving objects, collaborate with teammates, and hit a FIFA size-4 ball in the correct direction. All these tasks demand integrated robots that are autonomous (on-boa...

Goalkeepers have a very important role in handball. In coaching communities it is well recognized that goalkeepers' performances can predict team ranking in major tournaments. Despite this, few studies have been conducted on elite goalkeepers participating in World Championships. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyse goalkeepers' save performance during the 88 matches of the 2015 ...

Robot soccer is a challenging platform for multi-agent research, involving topics such as real-time image processing and control. A team of robots must work together to put the ball in the opponent’s goal while at the same time defending their own goal. A good strategy for the robot defenders can determine who wins the robotic soccer game. Therefore, the goal of this study is to propose a strat...

Futsal is one of the most popular sports in society and has attracted more fans all over world. There are than 12 million people spread 100 countries who have played futsal. by goalkeeper four field players with a duration two rounds 2 × 20 minutes. Therefore, every player must good physical condition to play optimally. Maximum oxygen volume (VO2max) an indicator that can be used determine stat...