Social and economic benefits from development of sports tracking technology
Submitting Institution
Kingston UniversityUnit of Assessment
Computer Science and InformaticsSummary Impact Type
TechnologicalResearch Subject Area(s)
Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
Summary of the impact
Research at Kingston University into methods for tracking sports
participants in an arena have been translated into a BAFTA-award-winning
system deployed by Channel 4 at the London Paralympics: a "multi-platform
Optical Tracking solution for Wheelchair Rugby & Basketball, capable
of detecting live impact speeds"
This system was deployed at the London O2 Arena and the Olympic
Basketball arena, to provide real-time analysis of player speeds,
cumulative distances, impact magnitudes, and other quantitative
statistics. There are plans to extend and improve this technology for
subsequent events.
This system had economic benefits for the commercial partner, DeltaTre
Ltd, and social benefits in contributing to Channel 4's positive portrayal
of disabled athletes.
Underpinning research
From 2001 to the present, the Digital Imaging Research Centre (DIRC) at
Kingston University has been carrying out research into how computer
vision methods can be used for tracking people in sporting events to
obtain statistics about performance, tactics and fitness.
From 2002 to 2005, DIRC carried out research into new methods to extract
useful information from the observation of sports activity through the
processing of video signals. This was facilitated by agreements with
Fulham and Queens Park Rangers Football clubs, and also by the `INMOVE'
FP7 project that investigated generation of content for mobile devices.
One objective of this research activity was the estimation of player
position and velocity. After employing a suitable camera model to
transform image to ground co-ordinates, there are still significant
errors, and uncertainty, associated with these estimates. Issues such as
occlusion, illumination and re-identification of individual team-mates
remain challenges that must be met, to accomplish this objective. Thus,
one aim for the research community is to propose methods and techniques
that reduce the uncertainty associated with the estimated presence and
positions of people in the scene. Researchers at Kingston have made
several important contributions to this underpinning research. Orwell et
al [1] showed how colour indexing could be used in a tracking context;
Ellis and Xu [2] proposed a method to track people in the presence of
partial observations. This was further developed by Ren, Orwell Jones and
Xu [6], and then by Xu, Orwell and Jones [3] for tracking people in a
sports context. In another paper, Ren, Xu, Orwell and Jones [5] developed
a method for modelling the transformation of image plane uncertainty into
ground plane uncertainty. Complete systems to obtain these estimates in a
sports context were investigated and published [4].
The INMOVE project included user trials and evaluation, and a link
between Kingston University and DeltaTre was established as part of the
INMOVE project, as DeltaTre staff participated in user trials and expert
interviews.
Key researchers: Graeme Jones (1993 — present, Professor), James Orwell
(1998 — present, Reader) and Tim Ellis (2002 — present, Professor)
References to the research
[1] James Orwell, Paolo Remagnino and Graeme Jones. "Multi-camera colour
tracking." Visual Surveillance, 1999. Second IEEE Workshop on (VS'99).
IEEE, 1999. [91 citations]
[2] Ming Xu and Tim Ellis. "Partial observation vs. blind tracking
through occlusion." British Machine Vision Conference 2002 (BMVC'02),
2002. [69 citations]
[3] Ming Xu, James Orwell and Graeme Jones. "Tracking football players
with multiple cameras." International Conference on Image Processing 2004
(ICIP'04), Vol. 5. IEEE, 2004. [60 citations]
[4] Ming Xu, James Orwell et al: "Architecture and algorithms for
tracking football players with multiple cameras." Vision, Image and Signal
Processing, IEE Proceedings, 152(2), 2005. [84 citations, Impact Factor
3.33]
[5] Jinchang Ren, Ming Xu, James Orwell, and Graeme Jones. "Multi-camera
video surveillance for real-time analysis and reconstruction of soccer
games." Machine Vision and Applications. 21(6): 855-863, 2010. [6
citations, Impact Factor 1.009]
[6] Jinchang Ren, James Orwell, Graeme Jones and Ming Xu, "Real-time
modeling of 3-D soccer ball trajectories from multiple fixed cameras" in
'IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology', 18(3):
350-362, 2008. [15 citations, Impact Factor 1.819]
Details of the impact
In 2012, DeltaTre Media Ltd commissioned a system to be used in the
London 2012 Paralympics, designed by Dr Orwell, to track the positions and
speeds of the participants in the Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball and
Wheelchair Rugby tournaments. This system exploited the research published
in [3,4,5]: the same camera model was used, similar tracking algorithms,
operating on partial observations, and described in [2], and the
algorithms as described in [4] were used as to reidentify the participants
after periods of occlusion.
This system was used as part of Channel 4's live coverage of 42
Paralympic matches, comprising two event types (Wheelchair Basketball and
Wheelchair Rugby), and deployed in two arenas (the O2 arena and the
Olympic Basketball Arena). In each match, the system was used to generate
graphics that were made available to the television director, and to the
Channel 4 website. The Channel 4 website area for these sports had
approximately 140 hours of live coverage, over 500,000* hits, and
comparable viewing figures for the televised matches. DeltaTre Media Ltd
gained an economic benefit through the development of innovative broadcast
technology which was delivered to Channel 4 and shown to a worldwide
audience.
By providing statistics of speeds and impacts between players, this
system was a component of the overall Paralympic coverage provided by
Channel 4, which emphasised the strength and resilience of the
competitors, challenging conventional stereotypes about disabled people.
The quality and significance of this coverage was recognised through the
award of a BAFTA for this work, for Channel 4 and DeltaTre, in the
Television Craft (Digital Creativity) category.
Channel 4's coverage of the Paralympics had a significant social impact:
the public perception of disability and disabled people has changed as a
result of this event and specifically of the media's portrayal of the
athletes involved. The collaboration between Kingston University and
DeltaTre made a distinct and material contribution to this impact, through
the provision of innovative technology that enabled the broadcaster to
present the sporting activities of disabled athletes in a new way.
Sources to corroborate the impact
Major Survey by Charities Aid Foundation: https://www.cafonline.org/media-office/press-releases/2012/1009-paralympic-effect.aspx
Sunday Times article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/athletics/article3803597.ece
English Federation of Disability Sport:
http://www.efds.co.uk/news/1210_united_response_survey_finds_positive_impact_of_2012_paralympics
Poll for charity `scope': http://www.scope.org.uk/news/paralympics-poll
Review by `disability horizons': http://disabilityhorizons.com/2012/10/paralympics-games-2012-the-legacy-and-impact/
BAFTA award: http://www.deltatre.com/2013/04/deltatre-wins-digital-creativity-bafta-2/
Corroborating contacts:
- Creative Director, DeltaTre Ltd: Use of people tracking system by
DeltaTre for Channel 4 Paralympics coverage
- Multiplatform Commissioning Editor for Sport, Channel 4: Use of people
tracking system by Channel 4 for its Paralympics coverage