"Gym teacher!" is Miha Drobnič in his youth, answering the classic question, "What will you be when you're big?"
The versatile athlete actively trained handball at Dol near Hrastnik, where he won the title twice. national champion, and was also awarded the the best player in Slovenia in their year. Quite expectedly, he enrolled at the Faculty of Sport, where, throughout his studies, he increasingly focused on science and the conditioning of athletes.
At college, he got the opportunity to work on projects that involved technology as well as sport. The perfect combination! He did research on the kinematics of the handball shot. For the first time, he started to work more seriously in data processing and sports science. "That's it!" he was increasingly convinced.
It was also at college that he first encountered Dewesoft software, without ever thinking that he would be working with the company a few years later.
In April 2019, together with colleagues Domnom Bremec and Robi Simonič established by SuperTrening Institute, where they create an environment for the conditioning of elite athletes.
He also benefited from further links with academia, where he worked as a researcher at Sweden's MIUN University, on the project SINTECwhere a revolutionary sensor patch is being developed. Later, he joined a project in Slovenia AiCoachUwhere they are developing a running coach using artificial intelligence. All this has given him much needed experience in the world of sensors and data processing.
He noted that there are a lot of sensors on the market, but data processing is limited, with many opportunities for improvement. He made suggestions to manufacturers to improve their programmes, but fell on deaf ears.
When he was describing the problems to a friend from Trbovlje, the friend introduced him to someone... "Everything really changed after our first meeting at Katapult," says Miha.
Soon he met the boys from the MonoDAQa (now Dewesoft Monitoring), a company operating in the Catapult. They have developed integrated accelerometers for long-term vibration monitoring of bridges and wind turbines, which, surprisingly, have also proved useful in sports.
MonoDAQ helped them to develop all the sensors, while at the same time they got to use software DewesoftX.
For more details on how Dewesoft's software helps them develop devices and analyse data, read here >>
They want to develop devices that will give objective results from tests carried out by athletes. They have three devices in development - a photocell, a tensiometric device and an isometric station. More than 1,000 athletes in Slovenia and abroad have already used their services and equipment, including an Olympic snowboarding champion Tim Mastnak.
Miha still loves coming to Katapult, our City of Acrobats. "The City of Acrobats offers an environment with all the professional support from an engineering point of view. I have never in my life got so much useful information in one place. With such support, you really can't say that it's other people's fault that you didn't make it - it's all up to you. And that counts for more than someone giving you €100,000 to start a business.
In the beginning I wondered what the point was. Where do I pay for all these meetings, all this information? Why would somebody just give it to me? It was really not clear to me.
I now understand the system of the Catapult and the City of Acrobats. By helping in this way, you feel that desire within yourself and then the nice feeling of going on to help the next person. And he to the next. And so a broad support system is built up.
This is a connectivity environment. So we can reach even higher in our entrepreneurial dreams."
Miha, Domen and Robi, we wish you to reach the whole world with your innovations!
