Guendouzi acceleration, pass to Ünder and cross to Alexis Sánchez who scores with a header. The Stade Vélodrome is abuzz and even visually impaired fans were able to enjoy the goal without missing a beat of the action. They owe that to a very simple invention by the young Toulouse engineers that allowed even visually impaired fans to follow the action in real time without missing a thing.
And the latter were able to appreciate it thanks to a tablet placed on their knees that exactly reproduced all the action, with their fingers resting on a kind of mobile piece that represented the ball in motion on the support.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Spain), he is together with his partner Arthur Chazelle to present his invention.
The two teammates have developed a touch pad that will reproduce the movements of the ball thanks to the reception and analysis of sports data provided live and in 5G. Under his fingers, the blind fan will thus be able to understand the course of the football match. If he wants more information, he can plug in his headphones and take advantage of the audio description of the action to better follow and even, eventually, have data such as the minute played, the score, the players involved, etc.
A YouTube video behind the project
The tablet symbolizes a land. Through vibrations and haptic feedback, the user will understand under their fingers what is happening on the pitch, the movement of the ball or the players in real time. The first model of Touch2See worked with pins that animated based on the game’s design, but early feedback from visually impaired users changed the prototype to something more refined.
It was a YouTube video of a man replaying the match action to a blind friend using a simple piece of cardboard that gave Arthur the idea for the tablet (video below). With his sidekick, they took the idea and turned it into a product that would be freely available to fans at a sports arena.
Initially, blind fans of the Orange Vélodrome de Marseille (Orange is a partner in the project) or the Stade de Toulouse can take advantage of it. The Touch2See startup hopes to expand its partnership with the French Football Federation to equip the Stade de France as the Blues matches approach, but also to apply its system to basketball, handball or athletics events during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games .
“Only 3% of French stadiums offer audio description to visually impaired visitors,” laments Arthur Chazelle. “We wanted to think of a tactile solution that allows people in need not to miss a thing about the game.” So they thought of this solution that does not require human intervention and allows the ball to be tracked, to capture the intensity of the movements and the game, all without latency thanks to 5G. For this reason, the Vélodrome, sponsored by Orange and fertile ground for innovation tests, opened its doors to them.
And to show the full validity of the project, the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is currently fine-tuning the prototype to implement a final model by the summer. A battery-powered solution that the Touch2See teams hope to be able to offer for free in stadiums and, why not, once the model is operational and stable, offer it to the general public at home to experience sporting events even more, be it which is. your situation
Source: BFM TV
