Indian engineers and sports scientists have teamed up to design an analytics software that uses electronic wireless sensors to measure a boxer’s punch force, foot and body movements and extract information that they say could help improve performance.

The analytics software platform under development by engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and Inspire Institute of Sports in Bellary, Karnataka, is intended to guide coaches and boxers in a manner human coaches alone cannot, its developers said.

One set of sensors embedded in gloves and foot insoles will analyse punch force and ground reaction force, while other sensors will record the boxer’s upper and lower body movements. The software called Smartboxer will also track the boxer’s left and right arm movements — attack, defence, or feint — through a set of video cameras in the boxing ring.

“Smartboxer is designed to provide measurable data about key boxing traits such as foot agility, ring awareness, or punch force at levels impossible through human observations alone,” said Ranganathan Srinivasan, the head of the IIT Madras Centre for Excellence in Sports Science and Analytics (CESSA).

Srinivasan and his colleagues have over the past four months worked with elite boxers under training at the IIS testing prototype versions of wearable sensors and collecting data on foot agility and ring awareness.

The boxing coach at IIS is enthusiastic about the effort. “We will be able to highlight to the boxers their strengths as well as areas that require development such as movement patterns, activity levels, punch and defensive repertoires — both, technically and tactically,” said John Warburton, the head of youth development for boxing at the IIS.

The Smartboxer project is part of broader efforts at CESSA to combine physics, data analytics, and wireless wearable sensor technology to improve performance in athletics, boxing and wrestling, CESSA faculty members said.

Those efforts are in line with the Indian government’s aim to increase the country’s medal count in the 2024 Olympics in key sports, including athletics, boxing and wrestling, the faculty members said.

Srinivasan said a validated and deployable version of Smartboxer is expected to be ready by mid-2023. The IIT Madras team and IIS plan to apply for a patent on Smartboxer once they have completed the validation.