Great start ‘Virtual Referee’ project

Vinay Balaji is a master student at the EEMCS faculty at TU Delft. Vinay came up with the idea of ‘Virtual Referee’, a technology which helps the referee to accurately and quickly determine whether or not it’s offside or a penalty during a football game.

In February 2018, Delft University Fund awarded €6.000,- to Vinay and his supervisor dr. Marco Zuniga. This cheque was made possible thanks to EEMCS alumni who donated to Vinay’s Virtual Referee project. With this money, Vinay will be able to demonstrate his idea in practice by means of a real test set-up.

Vinay was a bit overwhelmed upon receiving the cheque ‘I would like to thank the EEMCS alumni for giving me the opportunity to see my dream turn into reality. I promise to try my best and make this project successful.’

Since November, Vinay has been working on this graduation project ‘The hardest part was formulating the requirements. The various technologies such as RFID, Wi-Fi, UWB were investigated and weighed against the requirements. I have also been reading on the various advances in technology in the field of football.’

Now that Vinay has received his cheque, he can start investing in hardware (Ultra- Wide Band modules), various sensors (like accelerometers) and 3-D printing housing enclosures for sensor modules. Besides the hardware, he also plans to buy a camera to record football matches, in order to gather more insights on player movements.

Currently, Vinay is setting up a collaboration with the Sport Engineering Institute of the TU Delft and other universities across Europe. In three months from now, Vinay hopes to demonstrate a rudimentary system which is capable to detect offside. After 6 months, Vinay aims to get a prototype system working and to successfully implement it into the TU Delft football team.

See this page for more about Vinay’s Virtual Referee project.