You could certainly be forgiven for thinking that Muithu and Bagadus sound like character names from an H.P. Lovecraft story. In fact, they’re complimentary systems that have been combined to help soccer coaches record multi-camera videos of key game moments – using their smartphone – for later or instantaneous review.
Ordinarily, a coach would have to search back through an entire game’s worth of footage after the game was over, looking for specific plays that he (or she) made note of at the time. The new combined system, developed by Norway’s Universities of Oslo and Tromsø, is intended to make that unnecessary.
Muithu is a system that incorporates six linked cameras, all trained on different areas of the playing field. It also utilizes a smartphone app. When the coach has just seen a play that they want to review, they touch a button on their phone’s screen. This will cause the previous 15 seconds’ worth of Muithu’s game footage to be saved to their phone.
In that way, not only are they not saving unnecessary footage, but they can also review plays immediately, on the spot. Additionally, they can view the same events from different camera angles.
Should they want to track an individual player, well, that’s where Bagadus comes in.
Each player wears a sensor on their belt, designed by ZXY Sport Tracking. That sensor transmits their location, allowing Bagadus to keep track of them. By communicating with Muithu, it then overlays a square frame around the image of that player on the video footage – multiple players can even be tracked simultaneously.
While certainly impressive, the system isn’t entirely unprecedented. The Cairos system and one being developed at EPFL are also able to track players, and flag them on video footage.
The Muithu/Bagadus system can be seen in use in the video below.
Source: The Research Council of Norway