How can AI and computer vision help both kids and pro football players?

AI is now accessible in kids' smartphones, but is it powerful enough for professionals to train with? Computer vision and AI technologies enabled development of an app that does precise movement analysis, as well as ball speed, spin and trajectory – all with just a smartphone camera.

A celebrity-backed startup aimed at connecting football friends and players worldwide

Sports Computing is a Norwegian startup that makes pro-level football training accessible to anyone in the world with just a ball and a simple smartphone. They aim to create a global football community where anyone can compete with friends and players worldwide.

Top sports celebrities back this venture, including none other than Magnus Carlsen - current World Chess Champion (and arguably the best chess player to date), and the renowned Norwegian footballer and Manchester United ex-manager Ole Gunnar Solskjær.

Sadly, after some misfortunate past vendor cooperations, they were blocked from fully realizing their vision. Left with an application that didn’t meet their high standards and a codebase that couldn’t be developed because of severe technical debt, the startup's founders sought a strong product development partner.

Challenges that needed urgent solving

Newly redesigned UI required a brand new version of the mobile application delivered quickly.
Expected high traffic load demanded full scalability of the infrastructure. KickerAce offers connecting and competing with friends and players worldwide, from anywhere. Such global football community interacting flawlessly requires a global scale of performance.
Unmaintainable and undocumented codebase lacking versioning in the face of an urgent business need to speed up time-to-market of new feature rollouts, and reduce the previously accrued delays.
Diverse mix of skills – AI/ML, computer vision, video processing, mobile development, and backend – all needed in one development team, with an ability to package it and utilise all those capabilities in one seamless solution ready for a global audience.

Engineers who understand the value of time-to-market

One of the key success components of the cooperation was very fast delivery at the initial stage of product development. The development team needed to clean out the code and redesign the application for it to be fully working and in an investor-presentable state, and they quickly understood how valuable each day was.

Delivery of that first phase was done in record time, with the client elated with the results. Within two months, the application was working again and ready to grow.

Our deep tech partners and experts — the DAC Digital engineering team — have taken on the challenge and delivered flawlessly. From that initial 2-month sprint, the scope and extent of the cooperation only grew and continued, with now over 4000 hours spent designing and developing KickerAce. The deep-tech dev team is proud to have delivered every stage on time and with more than satisfactory results for the startup.

We couldn’t get a more ideal partner with extraordinary skills both within AI and application development. Professional and transparent project management is vital. PM and interactions are working exceptionally well. Your ability to work independently and come up with constructive alternative solutions, understandable for a layperson, has reduced the stress and concerns.

Kjell Heen

CEO of Sports Computing

A new spin on the technology

The startup also needed an innovative tech approach that could finally enable a precise analysis of body movement, object speed, spin and trajectory using input from only one smartphone camera and some smart computer vision processing.

The data science team had just the answer, with a unique algorithm that captures and tracks motion in real-time, providing an accurate and detailed assessment of the video data. This software has revolutionary capabilities, requiring only a single smartphone camera to work.

Extended cooperation involving neural networks and UX design

Among other projects, the delivery team was excited to also redesign the backend infrastructure of the application and help develop the backend AI-based tool that powers the image processing and analysis of the video material using neural networks. Assistance in redesigning the user interface, working alongside startup's own UX/UI designer was also provided.

Future of Kicker Ace

As a result of a very successful and ongoing collaboration, the application is now live in the App Store and runs blazing fast and accurately. Its new intuitive design and interface also make it easy to use by everyone worldwide.

It even found its place in the Norway Cup tournament – a series of Norwegian football events that gathers 50 000 participants. Kicker Ace organized the penalty kick competition, with official high scores tracked on the Kicker Ace website.

Our delivery team is proud to see how the application now helps both aspiring and professional football players in their training every day.