Senior Bowl rugby game uses UWB RFID technology to monitor player performance
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The American College Rugby Senior Bowl game is using RFID technology to understand player play and movement in order to improve practice and team strategy. This solution is provided by Zebra Technologies. The company provides active UWB tags, card readers and Zebra software to understand the position, speed and direction of each player and ball during the game and training. These data will be socialized The media is available to fans.
The Senior Bowl is held once a year, and about 100 players with better prospects for the NFL draft are invited each year. The players are divided into two teams to compete, the South team and the North team, coached by the coaching staff of the two NFL teams.
Senior Bowl executive director Phil Savage said that we are very positive about technologies that can improve the experience of coaches, players or fans.
Currently, several NFL and college teams have begun to use Zebra’s RFID technology to track player performance. All NFL teams can receive game day tracking data through the Official Player Tracking technology that Zebra cooperates with the NFL official. Approximately one-third of the teams use Zebra’s training solutions during training. The Zebra training system is similar to the technology deployed on the NFL arena. The Senior Bowl training and competition are held in the Lad-Peebles Stadium, so the RFID facility in the arena can be used to read the tag-related data.
John Pollard, vice president of business development for Zebra’s sports division, explained that during training, the players wore the plastic interlayers with UWB RFID tags attached to the shoulder pads. By embedding tags in the football, the system can track information such as the rotation speed, height and speed of the ball when kicking or throwing, and these data can also be bound to the kicker’s information.
To read all the data, 22 Zebra UWB receivers were installed in the arena. During the game and training, the UWB tags on the players and the ball transmit signals in the 6.35 GHz and 6.75 GHz frequency bands multiple times per second. The Zebra receiver can read these signals as far as 325 feet.
After Zebra software reads the data, it will calculate information such as the running speed of each player, the distance between other players and the player, as well as the speed and rotation of the throw, height, and distance. Pollard said, this process only takes a few seconds, and then, these data will be forwarded to the Senior Bowl management software, through social media to show fans and the media. This information can be used not only to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the players, but also to determine whether the players are tired.
Pollard said: “We are excited about the performance of the system and the data captured. Through this technology, we can provide more information to the fans and the team.”
Savage pointed out that these data not only allow the audience to understand the scene, but also provide a decision-making reference for the draft. Many scouts rely on field observations to judge players, but this technique can also provide powerful support.
Savage said that in the future, he envisions attaching RFID tags to pylons, goal lines, etc. Pollard predicts that in 2019 these data will be displayed on the big screen and provided to fans as part of the game broadcast.
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