A Turkish SME that works on sports activity analysis platform is looking for partners to share know-how

An SME, which provides a sports activity analysis platform through a wireless network of EMG (electromyography) based sensors optimized for athletes, has companies in both Turkey and the UK. Its customers are sports teams practicing different kinds of sports in the UK. The SME is seeking for the international partners, especially working on wearable and textile technologies, to develop its products by academic and scientific research collaborations by research cooperation agreement.

The company was first founded in Turkey, then a new company was established in the UK with its new name. The company produces EMG sensors to reduce financial loss due to injuries in the sports industry. Customers of the company are sport teams from different branches of the sports industry. These teams are currently located in the UK, the company aims to reach other countries in Europe in the future such as France, Italy, Spain, Germany.

In the professional sports industry, injuries caused by wrong training or lack of physiological knowledge are a burden to a sports club's finances and a barrier to its success. In response to these obstacles, the need for monitoring physiological and biomechanical muscle conditions has arisen in the sports industry. This monitoring provides better information on injury prevention and helps to predict and control potential injuries.
ElectroMyoGraphy (EMG) sensing is an electrodiagnostic medicine technique for evaluating and recording the electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles. EMG signals can capture a wide range of information from neural drive to a recorded subject's muscular condition. As a result, EMG technology is used in various applications such as medical diagnosis and rehabilitation, sports science research, athlete monitoring, human-machine interaction and gesture recognition.

The company's product provides a sports activity analysis platform through a wireless EMG-based sensor network optimized for athletes. The developed bio-sensors will be assisted by advanced signal processing methods to capture physiological data from the muscles accurately. The company is using the electrical signals to extract important physiological and biomechanical features such as localised muscular strength, force, fatigue level, dehydration, joint angular velocity, rotation and orientation. The company is analysing this necessary physiological information with cutting-edge machine learning methods to gain insight into neuromuscular improvements, training efficiency, athletic form and injury risks. This methodology ensures that the platform's data analysis software will significantly improve an athlete's performance and reduces the risks of injuries.

The company is also developing wireless EMG technology with high performance. They have published a paper to compare their hardware with the gold standard technology in the market. The SNR (SignalToNoiseRatio) result shows that they outperformed the EMG sensors in the market. They are also developing novel algorithms to cancel out the power line noise and motion artefact. The company publish lots of papers to validate their algorithms.

The company is a startup company with a small team. They expertise on EMG sensor and EMG signal processing algorithms, and aim to share the know-how with international companies to develop ground breaking product. It has also experience on the textile manufacturing but it requires totally different know-how and they faced lots of difficulties on textile technology. That’s why they are open to collaborate with a company which has an expertise on wearable & textile. They are also keen on academic research and have published papers in academic journals with high impact factors. The company believes that they can develop new algorithms and hardware design by collaborating with academic research groups and sharing know-how. The company is also ready to collaborate with industrial design companies especially the ones which have expertise on wearable technology.

The company is looking for the partners that have research and academic experience on wearable technologies to share know-how and technology to develop its products by research cooperation agreement.

Advantages & innovations

In the professional sports industry, injury due to wrong training or lack of physiological information is an obstacle for a sports club's success and a burden for its financials. As injuries have a substantial adverse effect on the professional sports industry, there is a considerable demand for elite athlete tracking technology valued at €2.1 billion in 2018 with a growth expectation of €7.3 billion by 2023. However, state of the art force decks, electromyography (EMG) sensors and isokineticdynamometers are stationary, i.e., unable to account for the very dynamic quality sports exercise training. In contrast, others such as GPS chest vests provide limited information output which is non-physiological. EMG technology is used in various applications such as medical diagnosis and rehabilitation, sports science research, athlete monitoring, human-machine interaction and gesture recognition. However, today, no EMG platform can respond to the sports sector's needs, which requires mobility, endurance, long distance and multi-channel data transmission, and advanced data analytics. The company's product presents a complete athlete tracking system that can adequately address industrial demand and overcome these limitations. It aims to drastically improve athletic performance with the help of innovative EMG sensors that can detect neuromuscular weaknesses and positively impact the athlete's ability to train efficiently and with low injury risk. The company achieves this by providing the world's smallest noise-cancelling EMG-based sensor network that can wirelessly transfer long-distance, multichannel data during training and information of great value to their coaching and medical staff.

Stage of development

Concept stage

Partner sought

The company is seeking research groups partners for academic validation and industry & business groups partners for know-how sharing.

Contact/ source: Enterprise Europe Network (europa.eu)