Delivering Broadcast Quality, Fully Automated Sports Production Through AI Powered Sports Action Tracking and PTZ Cameras

With consumer expectations of viewing experience set through watching tier 1 sports productions, sports programmers are searching for solutions that deliver an engaging experience for a cost that reflects the budgets available.

Artificial Intelligence-driven sports production solutions have been available for some time. But to date, the ability to accurately track the sporting action combined with visual clarity has been a challenge.

This paper describes how a panoramic camera system can be implemented to monitor the entire field of play, to feed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that identifies the sporting action. Further, this paper describes how the AI engine can drive a high-quality pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera to follow the action to deliver the program feed.

The paper will also discuss how the AI engine can accurately point the PTZ camera – taking into account video and AI processing delays, how those processing latencies can be measured, to forward predict directional vectors and correctly point the program feed camera irrespective of distance from the camera and the variation in angular velocity realized.

David Edwards | Vislink | Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom
Siddhi Imming | Vislink | Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom