A START-UP company created by three Bristol University students has been given access to the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer, based at Emersons Green.
Pitchwise has created technology enabling smartphones to film grassroots football matches by automatically following the play.
Graduates Philip Mortimer, Liam Jones and Jeremy Colfer had the idea when they were students studying computer science at the university, and playing football together.
Now their ‘spin-out’ company has been awarded £25,000 of computing time on Isambard-AI, which is based at the Bristol & Bath Science Park.
Their system combines a smartphone-mounted hardware device with AI-powered vision software that follows play, generates highlights, and provides insights into performances.
They say the aim is to “recreate the same excitement seen in the Premier League for every local community club”.
Pitchwise has also developed an app which shares highlights and tracks statistics.
Philip originally developed the AI element of the project for his undergraduate dissertation, focusing on automated ball tracking.
Jeremy and Liam further developed the idea building the hardware and companion app for their masters’ theses, while Phil was at Cambridge studying for a masters in AI and machine learning. They are now working full-time on Pitchwise, building and testing working prototypes with several local teams and starting wider pilot programme, while refining their AI models.
The Isambard-AI access represents 5,500 “graphic processing unit hours” and has been awarded through the UK Research & Innovation AI Research Resource programme supported by national agency Innovate UK.
It will allow Pitchwise team to train their computer-vision models far beyond what would be possible on standard hardware.
Isambard-AI was officially switched on by Technology Secretary Peter Kyle at a ceremony in July, and was ranked as the 11st fastest supercomputer in the world and 6th fastest in Europe on opening.
The £225 million computer has 5,400 cutting-edge NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips and around 100,000 times more storage than a 256GB phone or computer, with a data network around 2,000 times faster than the average home broadband connection.
Liam said: “This is a really nice full-circle story, starting as a student venture at Bristol, and now using the university’s world-leading infrastructure to advance our technology and mission.
“It’s a huge boost in our journey to bring cutting-edge AI to community sport.”