You’ve chosen to imagine a sport where players zoom through the air! You might want to learn more about personal flight, where small machines help people fly without an airplane. Just remember: flying is cool, but tackling someone at cloud level is probably a foul!
This scenario explores personal flight, technologies that could allow an individual to move through the air without riding inside a traditional airplane or helicopter. Engineers have developed experimental jet suits, rocket belts, powered wings, and other wearable aircraft. Today’s systems generally require trained pilots, careful safety procedures, and short flights. If future designs become safer, quieter, and easier to control, they could inspire new forms of transportation, exploration, rescue work, and sport. Just remember: flying is cool, but tackling someone at cloud level is probably a foul!
If flying became part of sports, what new rules would keep everyone safe and make the game fair?
Make your own future flying-sport player using cardboard, paper, tape, and string. Design a wearable flight device, then create a simple playing field with goals or targets. Think about how players steer, score, and land safely.
With an adult, ask ChatGPT:
“Invent a sport where players can fly. How do they move, score, and stay safe?”
Use the ideas to draw your playing field, invent your own rules, or design the flying gear players wear.
You’ve chosen to imagine a sport where the ball can make its own calls! You might want to learn more about smart referees, where sensors and computers help people make fair decisions in sports. And don’t be alarmed if arguing with the ref gets much stranger when the ref is also the ball!
This scenario explores smart referees, a foresight concept about using sensors, cameras, computers, and connected sports equipment to help make decisions during games. These technologies can notice things that are difficult for people to see in the middle of fast-moving action, like exactly where a ball landed or whether it crossed a line. Some sports already combine technology with human referees, raising an interesting question for the future: should technology simply give referees more information, or should it eventually make some calls itself? And don’t be alarmed if arguing with the ref gets much stranger when the ref is also the ball!
If a computer and a human referee disagree, who should make the final call?
Make your own talking referee ball from paper, tape, and a balloon or crumpled paper. Add paper symbols for sensors, then invent three things your ball can notice during a game. Decide what it says when the ball goes out, someone scores, or players disagree.
With an adult, ask ChatGPT:
“Invent a talking sports ball that helps referee its own game.”
Decide which of its rules seem fair, change any you disagree with, and then draw your smart ball showing where its sensors would go.
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