Catapult Vector T7
Wearable Sportstech Product Design + Development

The Catapult Sports Vector T7 is an advanced basketball-specific sports technology wearable suite designed for professional athletes and teams. The suite detects, analyses and transmits over 1,000 unique performance metrics to enhance training, reduce injury risks, and inform real-time strategic decisions on-the-court. Vector T7 builds upon Catapult’s 20+ years of experience in professional basketball athlete monitoring technology, analytics, and data. The T7 offers unprecedented insights into on-court performance, revolutionising the way coaches and teams evaluate + optimise strategic decisions to improve the outcomes of the game.

The challenge was to develop a compact, lightweight wearable capable of accurately capturing basketball-specific movements and providing elite-level insights into athlete performance. The device needed to identify and record these movements in indoor environments, allowing coaches and athletes to make data-driven decisions to improve training, prevent injuries, and enhance game-time strategies. Meeting this challenge required innovative design, advanced sensor technology, and seamless integration with Catapult's software suite. To improve athlete compliance the T7 wearable demanded a reduction in size and weight, and to facilitate portability for teams a reduction in size, weight and functionality of the Charging Dock + Carry Case.

The Vector T7 solution combines a sleek, 73% smaller design with advanced inertial sensors, machine learning, and ClearSky's local positioning system to deliver accurate and comprehensive performance monitoring. Developed through extensive research, iterative testing, and collaboration with elite basketball teams, the T7 captures over 1,000 performance metrics and provides real-time analytics. The T7 Carry and Charge Dock simplifies device management and charging for up to 24 devices, allowing coaches to easily access and analyse data, streamline decision-making processes, and make informed adjustments to training regimens and game-time strategies, ultimately enhancing on-court performance and athlete wellbeing.

Vector T7 revolutionises athlete performance monitoring + injury prevention by providing real-time, basketball-specific performance data. Its compact design, extended battery life + user-friendly interface increase athlete compliance, while its advanced analytics unlock unprecedented insights into on-court performance. The next-generation Vector wearable device has contributed to Catapult's continued market leader status in the professional IoT smart sportstech sector (working w/ 3,625+ Teams, across 40+ professional sporting codes, across 137 Countries).

Throughout the design development of Vector T7 wearable, Catapult collaborated with a number of NBA and NCAA teams, including Duke University Men’s Basketball. The Vector T7 Technology Suite is integrated with Catapults proprietary and leading ‘Basketball Movement Profile’ software platform, which quantifies + categorises every type of basketball movement on the court, helps coaches make better decisions for their athletes + identify the causes of performance strain with more accuracy. The T7 device captures previously unattainable metrics on individual athletes, enabling data-driven decision-making that leads to improved performance, reduced injuries, and a competitive edge for teams. New positional + inertial sensors are optimised for basketball, offering the potential for future integration of additional data sets such as heart rate, physiological, mouthguard, and EMG metrics.