Germany might not have been awarded the handball penalty in the round of 16 against Denmark if the match ball had not been equipped with sensors. The technology comes from the Munich-based company Kinexon, which is a leader not only in football but also in the NBA – and also supplies the industry. 1E9 spoke to one of the founders.
By Wolfgang Kerler
The German team has small sensors to thank for its entry into the quarter-finals of the European Championship in their own country. The electronics weigh just 3 grams – and they are built into the official Adidas match ball: it was christened “Football Love”. The sensors form the heart of the “Connected Ball Technology”, which is being used for the first time at a European Championship.
In concrete terms, this means that the sensors in the ball collect and send precise data in real time, which can be accessed by the video referees, among others. Where on the pitch the ball is, how fast it is flying, when does it come into contact with the ball? The receivers for this are distributed around the pitch and are reminiscent of WiFi routers.
Without these sensors, the round of 16 match between Germany and Denmark on June 29th might have ended very differently: When the hand of the Dane Joachim Andersen briefly came very close to the ball in the 52nd minute after a cross from David Raum, it was almost impossible for the human eye to see whether or not there had actually been a handball. Referee Michael Oliver only got clarity when he consulted the video assistant. Then his decision: handball. Penalty for Germany. The score was 1:0.
The audience also finds out why this decision was made: the data from the sensors is displayed in the form of a curve. The deflection when the ball is touched is clearly visible.
The Munich company behind the ball sensors
It is not being made public anywhere. But if you do a little research, you will find out who is behind the sensor technology that saved Germany from the quarter-finals: In their press releases about the official European Championship ball, both Adidas and the DFB mentioned the Munich-based company Kinexon. And the company has written a real success story in recent years.
It all started when the later founders Oliver Trinchera and Alexander Hüttenbrink took part in a tour of the Allianz Arena in Munich during a FC Bayern match. “Back then, we as fans were already getting information about how many kilometers Schweinsteiger had run, what his passing rate was, which team had more possession of the ball,” Oliver Trinchera recalls in an interview with 1E9. “I always wondered how this data was actually generated.”
The answer back then: with technology, but also with a lot of manual work – including mistakes. “At that time, 24 HD cameras were installed in the arena, the material from which was collected in a huge server room.” But the technology at the time could only process what was actually happening on the field in a rudimentary way. “It could recognize splashes of color,” says Trinchera.
Who is which player, what actions can take place on a playing field and what they look like, all of this had to be classified manually. Back then, two people had to use a mouse to follow the ball on the screen. And it took eight hours until all the data was available. “Welcome to a high-tech country!”
The two founders, who were still doing their doctorates at the Technical University of Munich at the time, had an idea: “The data is of great value – not only for spectators, but also for coaches and clubs, in order to train players better and protect them from injuries,” says Trinchera. “So we wanted to develop a way to record data with high precision, fully automatically and in real time.” And that’s exactly what the two of them did.
They founded their company and within a few years established a set of sensors – for balls, but also for players to wear on their bodies – and their own cloud software that translates the physical world into a digital twin and can enrich it with data. This allows real-time analyses to be carried out, as is currently the case at the European Championships, but also in training. Live ball tracking in football and handball, player load analyses, wireless player tracking are the keywords for the system’s capabilities.
“The coach can see how his players are performing: how good are their sprints, how good is their endurance, is anyone at risk of injury,” explains Trinchera. “Our technology is also used for the tactical analysis of plays.” AI is already being used to evaluate shots in basketball. In addition, information that TV viewers receive often comes from Kinexon systems.
Industry also needs sensor and real-time data
According to the company, 400 teams worldwide rely on the technology from Munich – from the Denver Nuggets to RB Leipzig. In the American basketball league NBA, the market share is over 80 percent. The major international handball and football associations also trust Kinexon. One prerequisite for this success: the technology has been tried and tested extensively for years – by the company itself, but also by partners.
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Strictly speaking, Kinexon now consists of two companies: Kinexon Sports on the one hand, and Kinexon Industries on the other. “We noticed that the digital twin and the automation of processes are a very big topic in industry,” recalls Oliver Trinchera. Where in the factory are forklifts and robots located, which pallet has to be brought from A to B and when: “At the time, there was no operating system to network all the moving things and automatically orchestrate them.”
So the start-up adapted its technology for industrial customers – and now counts companies such as BMW and SAP among its partners. Business is also booming in the USA. “I think we have proven that you can turn the tables in the Industrial Internet of Things sector,” says Trinchera. “We can definitely build champions in Germany that will then also be successful in the USA.”
Incidentally, the technology from Munich has also made it to the top of the world in football. It was already used at the World Cup in Qatar – but did not help the German national team to perform better at the time.
In these articles you will learn more about the sport of the future:
Cover photo: The official European Championship match ball, Adidas
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2024-07-05 05:34:53
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