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Galileo Masters 2020 | Sports4VIP Team is the winner in the "Space for Fun" category

In the context of the "Galileo Masters 2020 Competition", the European GNSS Agency (GSA) committee consisting of 10 experts, unanimously declared the Sports4VIP team as the Winner in the "Space for fun" category. The announcement of the results was made during Space Week 2020 which took place online from 7 to 11 December 2020. The team had already won the first place during the Greek invitation.

In addition, the Sports4VIP team was in the list of the 12 best proposals, among 500 proposals, in all categories of the competition.

About the project:
So far, visually impaired people (VIP) have been limited to being informed about sports mainly through audio descriptions. Taking advantage of just one of the senses is an incomplete, delayed approach that is also vulnerable to subjectivity because the stimulations received are filtered through a commentator. It also does not enable VIP to be equal participants in the emotion, socialisation, and recreation of sports. Sports4VIP tackles this by introducing the sense of touch to the experience of sports for VIP. It is a Galileo enabled wearable with an AI-based tracking system. Athletes and/or objects (footballs, basketballs, etc.) are continuously followed and the spatial data is transferred to Sports4VIP IoT devices called VIPins. A VIPins is a miniature version of the contextual field with moving parts that allow VIP to follow the movement of athletes/objects, thereby making them equal recipients of the sensory sports experience.

Sports4VIP Team members: 

  • Konstantinos Kokolakis (team leader), TUC PhD candidate, Laboratory of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, School of Mineral Resources Engineering, Technical University of Crete.
  • Georgios Deligiorgis, Georgios Kassiotis, both graduates of the Physics Dept., Univeristy of Crete

About the contest:
The innovation competition is scouting for the most forward‐thinking applications based on satellite navigation. It provides support for innovations at any development stage, with the ultimate aim of turning them into real business cases. 

TUC SenseLab Research Group is Greece's Regional Organizer for both major European Space Competitions Galileo Masters and Copernicus Masters 2020.

© Technical University of Crete 2012