(iTers News) – If there had been a smart enough soccer ball to tell it had crossed the goal line, England’s prolific soccer player Frank Lampard would have scored a second goal to make a 2:2 draw in England’s semi-quarter-final match with Germany in the 2010 South Africa World Soccer Game.

To the dismay of England soccer fans, however, referees of the match missed out that Lampard’s kicked-ball had crossed the goal line, and England eventually ended up losing the mach by a disastrous margin of 1 to 5.

Yet, the match was a turning point for FIFA, the organizer of World Cup Soccer Game. to start consider introducing an intelligent enough alert system to send referees a signal that a ball has passed the goal line.

FIFA announced on July 6 it has approved soccer ball maker Select’s GoalRef system for use during professional soccer games after the governing body of World Cup Soccer Game has carried a months-long stringent and rigorous test on the system’s shock-and collision-proof durability .

The GoalRef system comes complete with iBall, the world’s first intelligent ball, and a wireless antenna-studded goal frame.

The working theory is straightforward. Called after an ‘i’ an iconic low-case letter of intelligent, the iBall is built with a web of inducting copper wire, which use induction to communicate with a panel of antennas mounted on the goal frame. At the very moment that the iBall cross the goal line, the system send an alert signal to referee’s wristwatch it made it to a goal.



Select is a Demark-based ball maker

Peter Knap, CEO of Select, said "It's challenging work to design an intelligent ball that can withstand Ronaldo's kick and at the same time be able to communicate with a system on the goal line. At Select we have been developing the soccer ball for more than 65 years so we have a solid head start when it comes to ensuring quality in new solutions."

While the Danish company Select is the ball manufacturer behind the iBall, the complete GoalRef system has been developed in partnership with Fraunhofer IIS of Germany, part of Europe's largest application-oriented research organization, The Fraunhofer Society.

Project leader Ingmar Bretz from Fraunhofer IIS states, "For us to achieve this, having a reliable partner like Select has been essential. Select has years of development experience from the history of GoalRef and their knowhow within ball production has been vital for our success."

 

 

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