We know Zebra Technologies best as the industry leader in barcode-printing and RFID technology, as its identification and tracking solutions have been deployed in a surprising range of applications. Still, some applications are just more exciting than others, especially when they impact enterprises about which we’re as rabidly fanatical as football, basketball, baseball, soccer and motor sports. Zebra’s MotionWorks Sport Solution promises to help our favorite teams and athletes polish their skills as never before via objective, real-time performance data. Sensors in players’ equipment track vital statistics to within scant inches, while algorithms instantly crunch these player stats and deliver them in real-time to coaches, players, media and fans to improve the game experience for all involved. How cool is that?!
To quote Zebra General Manager of Location Solutions, Jill Stelfox, “The ability for organizations to gather real-time visibility into the location and condition of their most valuable assets is absolutely critical to their success. We believe Zebra’s MotionWorks Sports Solution will help professional and collegiate sports teams – as well as their players and business partners – by providing valuable information and tools, such as game statistics, real-time video overlays, and data which will help to enhance team training, evaluation, and fan experience. We are committed to providing innovative products and solutions from smart printers to real-time tracking solutions to help organizations gain better visibility into their operations. Through our real-time location solutions offerings, we are providing the means to track the game at a level of precision the industry has not seen before.”
The MotionWorks Sports Solution is designed to be easy to implement. RFID receivers installed throughout a venue read “quarter-sized” active RFID tags located unobtrusively in player equipment to register critical data like speed, distance and direction of motion. The system archives this data into an easily accessible database, plus generates graphic overlays to on-field action for use by coaches, trainers, scouts and players.
Zebra’s MotionWorks approach to sports-visualization is specifically designed to deliver the four components that it recommends as essential to any successful implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) strategies: connected devices, Internet access everywhere, intuitive remote device management, and application connectivity. Zebra pioneered the art and science of delivering the identification, location and measurement data necessary to allowing enterprises to maximize their effectiveness, and now it’s tailored those proven strategies to helping our favorite teams and athletes perform at their best? All I can say is, “SCORE!!!”