The Pro-Kabaddi league is seeking a cost-effective and transportable technology that can detect player-to-player contact and/or players entering new kabaddi arena zones or leaving the zone of play.
Due to the nature of the sport, player-to-player contact can be very subtle, light and fast. It can be difficult to detect this by naked eye or even cameras at times. In addition to this, line of sight can often be obscured (even with multiple cameras focused on the arena) because this sport can have up to 8 players in action in an area of 10 meter by 6.5 meter.
Kabaddi arenas are segmented into different zones by lines. Players enter a new kabaddi zone as soon as any part of the player makes physical contact with the ground within the zone and is referred to as a line-cut.
Solutions that can detect either of player-to-player contact or line-cuts are of interest for this project.
Background
Kabaddi is a contact team sport played between two teams of seven players, the objective of the game is for a single player on offence, referred to as a “raider”, to run into the opposing team’s half of a court, tag out as many defenders as possible, and return to their own half of the court, all without being tackled by the defenders, and in a single breath(within the defined raid time of 30 seconds). Points are scored for each player tagged by the raider, while the opposing team earns a point for stopping the raider. Players are taken out of the game if they are tagged or tackled but are brought back in for each point scored by their team from a tag or tackle. More information on the rules of the sport can be found in the following link: https://www.prokabaddi.com/kabaddi-rules-videos
Pro Kabaddi League is the second most watched sports league in India and had 328 Million unique viewers tuning in to watch it for its seventh season held in 2019.The sport and the league has been gathering popularity and the pressure to find an infallible referee tool has grown with it.
Requirements
- Discretely identify relevant player contact in relation to the relevant arena environment.
- Identify a player uniquely to isolate the players who have come in contact of each other.
- Cause no harm nor impair players performance during the match.
- Identify the arena zone a player is in, based on players initial physical contact with the ground in an arena region.
- Provide the results in real-time to be able to be utilised for decision making during the live match.
- Be scalable and cost-effective – A typical season of the league comprises of 137 matches during a time period of 13 weeks.
- Be able to continually run throughout the match and be able to present timestamped events.
- Easy to transport, set up and pack away – The league is conducted in 12 different cities, with the league moving from one city to the next in a caravan format.
- Ideally, integrate with broadcasting of the live match or be open to future development for broadcasting.
- Solution providers should be able to provide integration support for modifying the technology for use in the league.
Possible Solution Areas Include But Are Not Limited To
- Embedded sensors
- Motion capture
- Pressure sensitive materials
- Smart textiles
- Location trackers
- Visual mapping of the court
- Positioning via inertial measurements
