IIT-M develops Smartboxer to boost winning chances in 2024 Olympics

CHENNAI: In order to boost India's boxing medal tally in the 2024 Olympics, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology(IIT) Madras and the Inspire Institute of Sports (IIS) in Bellary, Karnataka, are creating a low-cost boxing analytics platform.

Indian sportsmen will have a superior competitive advantage thanks to an analytics platform named "Smartboxer," which is being developed by the Center of Excellence for Sports Science and Analytics at IIT Madras as a multi-version programme. Wearable sensors and cameras that are connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) will be used to provide feedback and performance evaluations.

A 'Smartboxer' will be deployed to analyse the boxers' performances at the Inspire Institute of Sport (IIS). Based on the feedback from IIS, changes will be incorporated into the "Smartboxer" analytics platform. This will enable the software to be effectively used to assist coaches and boxers.

Sports engineering, a relatively new discipline, is an inter-disciplinary domain that requires the application of mathematics, physics, artificial intelligence, and IoT-driven wearables. Sports engineering will help to understand the physiology and bio-mechanics associated with a sport. It will aid in solving sporting problems and designing better sports equipment.The Indian government has chosen a few major sports to concentrate its efforts on in order to reach the noble goal of boosting the number of medals at the 2024 Olympics.

This includes athletics, badminton, wrestling, boxing, shooting, hockey, weightlifting, and boxing. In developing nations like India, it typically takes ten years or longer to obtain an Olympic medal. The fundamental goal of IIT Madras in developing "Smartboxer" is to implement technology-based player performance management, which is a crucial facilitator in accomplishing this goal.

Highlighting how 'Smartboxer' can boost India's medal tally at the Olympics, Prof. Ranganathan Srinivasan, Head, Center of Excellence for Sports Science and Analytics, IIT Madras and Adjunct Faculty, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Madras, said, "This technology that is being developed will act as a bridge between the coach and the elite athlete to identify, understand, and improve the performance constructively. "Smartboxer" is one of the many initiatives of IIT Madras aimed towards the Indian government's ambitious goal of winning more medals in the Olympics.

John Warburton, Head of Youth Development (Boxing) at the Inspire Institute of Sports (IIS), said, "This system will allow us to analyse a boxer's performance in a way that aids progression. We will be able to highlight the boxers' strengths as well as areas in which they need to improve, such as movement patterns, activity levels, punch and defensive repertoires - both technically and tactically.I am greatly excited by the system's potential to use data and artificial intelligence in a bid to identify coaching points and support our observations of the athletes. "

Explaining the unique features of the analytics platform, Dr. Babji Srinivasan, Associate Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT Madras, said, "The smart boxer system integrates data from video streams and multiple IoT devices. The information extracted from this multivariate data provides fight analytics that can not only help coaches but also the judges quantify the key traits of boxing champions.

The IIT Madras researchers, along with IIS, are planning to apply for a patent for the 'Smartboxer' after validation from the IIS