Dortmund Borussia’s Footbonaut

What it is

German’s Dortmund Borussia is not the richest football club on the planet- though not the poorest either. Their competitive focus is on scouting the best young talents wherever on this planet – long before they will peak. These young super-potentials are then trained-to-excel in Dortmund. When realized, the best of them are sold to the richest clubs. Gotze went to Bayern for 37 million euros. Mkhitaryan to Manchester United for 42 million. Gündogan to Manchester City for 27 million.

Part of Borussia’s training success is the Footbonaut. This is a robotic cube cage. Each of the four walls consists of 16 square panels. When the robot-machine starts, balls fly from different corners and with different speeds to the practicing player in the middle. The players have to kick them into the panel that lightens up immediately after the balls start flying. These ‘random’ balls give the player 5000 extra ball-contact moments per year. But the Footbonaut also trains the footballer outside his regular comfort zones, inviting attempts beyond his current abilities.

Why it is Cool

Here a ‘robotic’ cage seriously helps to get the best out of humans. It trains them to anticipate more quickly, intelligently, intuitively and effectively on balls flying to them from all direction. As most of our ‘electric tools’ the Footbonaut is a device that can be adopted for the personal training scheme for every player. You can adapt the speed and which part of the field you activate. That means that each player can practice on a – for them designed – plan.  This sign is cool because it connects with the megatrend Technology

Future Growth Potential

The Footbonaut is easy to use and helps to improve the players is highly sophisticated and customized manners.

We have written a booklet on the Future of Work – download it here for free. It tells the story about robots and software programs eating away very many future jobs. But it also tells the story how they can empower us, improve us and let us anticipate the future in more intelligent and intuitive ways.