Electronic Home Plate is runner up at Invention of the Year Awards

ISR-affiliated Professor Christopher Davis (ECE), Postdoctoral Researcher John Rzasa, and ECE students Gerald Spessard, Leroy Chamberlain, Jr., and Jakob Scharmer were runners-up at the 26th University of Maryland Invention of the Year Awards reception on April 16. The awards are sponsored by the University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC).

Davis and his colleagues were runners up in the Physical Science Category for their electronic home plate (EHP) invention.

The EHP is a simple, low-cost baseball home plate that contains electronic and opto-electric components to detect and indicate the presence, position, and speed of a baseball passing over the plate. It is designed to assist umpires in determining if a pitch is a ball or a strike in games and can be a valuable tool for both pitchers and batters in baseball training. Not only can the EHP detect a ball as it passes between the outer edges of the home plate, but also it automatically adjusts to correspond to the knee-to-chest strike zone.

Winners were selected by an independent panel of judges consisting of representatives from on and off campus, who voted for the Invention of the Year in three different categories: Information, Life, and Physical Sciences.

UMD’s innovations help to stimulate the local economy, provide valuable products for public use, and help fuel research and entrepreneurial initiatives through inter- and intra-university collaborations. The event was part of the University of Maryland's 30 Days of EnTERPreneurship, a month-long celebration and exhibition of innovation and entrepreneurship on the College Park campus.

Published April 24, 2013