Researchers from DTU are developing the new and revolutionising smartphone app, Itracket, to make tennis practice easier and accessible to everyone. The app will be based on novel AI technology.
With the smartphone app, Itracket, you can record, replay and review tennis sessions. The team behind this patented technology wishes to make tennis training more accessible and, through artificial intelligence, the app can help analyse a tennis match, incl. backhand, forehand and serve.
Effective training with AI technology
"There is not a lot of portable training solutions in tennis for the everyday user, so it has an enormous potential"
Data Scientist Emil Hovad, DTU Compute
Itracket will allow easy recording and the video data will be analysed with AI technology. This makes it possible to cut out irrelevant parts, such as pauses, and calculate all the relevant video sequences and related statistics.
By browsing the statistics and video sequences, the user will get an overview of the most important moments and results. This will allow them to share the results easily with coaches and get personalized feedback.
Thus, the app can work as a personal pocket-sized trainer and provide an alternative solution to expensive tennis lessons.
“There is not a lot of portable training solutions in tennis for the everyday user, so it has an enormous potential“, says Data Scientist Emil Hovad from DTU Compute who is project manager at ITracket.
“Every tennis player in the world could have a trainer in his pocket and get notes from pros through a new kind of tennis community. It will make a huge difference”, adds tennis player and Itracket business advisor Joachim Allerup.
A new tennis community
The team behind ITracket dreams about creating a tennis community on the app that will bring something entirely new to the world of tennis.
“We want to create a great place for tennis players to share videos, connect with each other and make assessments of how people are playing and who will be a good match. This will add a new social dimension to the game,” says Joachim Allerup.
To accommodate this, the video sequences and statistics on the app can be shared among users and encourage social interaction and competition.
DTU as innovation platform
The team has used DTU’s vast ecosystem for innovation advantageously after Johan Weiss Hansen and Leonardo Leon Moraes got onboard through the course Hardtech Entrepreneurship.
“The business developers at Tech Transfer and innovation responsibles at the departments have helped navigate DTU’s many offers in innovation and provide overall business advice”, says Emil Hovad.
To get started, the project received the DTU Discovery Grant and, in March 2020, they received the DTU Proof of Concept Grant to mature the project towards commercialisation.
The team is also a part of the pre-startup mentor programme where they will get business insights from industry professionals to move forward with wind in their backs.