The robotic motion control discipline regularly used in cinema to create layered special effects is being adapted for innovative player tracking and broadcasting in sports.
If there is a movie scene of, say, Scarlett Johansson running away from a series of explosions, the director may only need one take of her running, then stage additional shots of the various pyrotechnics. All of the footage can be aggregated into one clean clip because the cameras are all following the same predetermined path and pattern.
“Sandwich all of those sequences together with the same robot precision, and what you end up with is a very real looking visual effect,” James Banfield, a global marketing manager for Nikon-owned MRMC, said. “It looks real because it is real — they are real explosions, they are real things that actually happened, it’s just that they didn’t happen at the same point in time.”
That same level of sophisticated and exact coordination of robot-controlled cameras will now be applied to sports through the new products, Polycam Player and Polycam Chat. The Player product will sync with the TRACAB optical tracking system of new partner ChyronHego — already installed throughout the Premier League, Bundesliga and Major League Baseball (via Statcast) — and use artificial intelligence to direct the cameras.
“What it effectively does is create a very smooth video clip from a robot that can be positioned in a stadium almost anywhere,” Banfield said.
From a tactical standpoint, team analysts will be able to track a variety of on-field events from new vantage points. Polycam Player will be able to focus on a single player, for instance, keeping him or her in the shot at the same zoom level — that consistency of angle can be more easily compared to other games to check development or be used to evaluate an opponent.
Part of the appeal, Banfield said, is also just one of logistics. While installing a camera platform, the necessary equipment and operator placement can be expensive or onerous especially in older stadiums, the robotics system powered by MRMC (Mark Roberts Motion Control) with Nikon D5 DSLR cameras can be maneuvered remotely or automatically. They can also be placed in inaccessible areas where a person couldn’t safely stand for a game, like a roof perch.
One of the soccer clubs MRMC was working with during the trial phase had placed their video installation closer to the 18-yard box than the center line because of the configuration of the stadium architecture, rendering the dissection of formations very difficult.
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“Their footage was skewed from one angle. Not only that, it was particularly low, so if anything happened in the corner furthest from them, it was very difficult to figure out what level of spacing there actually was,” Banfield said, adding of the new setup: “Immediately, just having that change of viewpoint makes all the difference to a team that’s trying to understand, when they’re winning, what it is they’re doing right but, more importantly, when they’re losing and timing’s critical, understanding what is actually going wrong.”
Broadcasters can also use the Polycam Chat solution designed for interviews or studio shows, using limb detection to keep the commentators squarely in the frame.
SportTechie Takeaway
Broadcasters and analysts often have diverging interests — TV wants to capture the goal and the surrounding emotion tightly while club officials want wide-angles that highlight all the machinations leading up to the goal — so this type of system can ensure that each gets what it needs.
For now, MRMC is offering four locations: two high endzone cameras, one high center-line camera and one designated player tracking camera. These seem designed for the analyst but offer additional options for any broadcaster looking to supplement its viewpoints. NBC Sports, for instance, introduced a tactical camera that would keep all 22 players in frame for its Premier League coverage.
After all, the desire to recreate a high overhead view inspired one English soccer coach to pioneer the use of drones in European soccer — while limited to training now, the opportunity for game use could come. An auto-pilot feature could help replicate what MRMC is already offering through its AI automation. Other endeavors to provide tactical vantage points include panoramic shots, though those tend to lose their image fidelity when zoomed in.