Zoom with a view: high-tech television sports project at UCD

SPORTS FANS have never had it so good when it comes to watching games on television but if a new research project taking place in Dublin is successful, things might get even better.

Clarity, the Science Foundation Ireland-funded centre involving academic research teams based in Dublin City University, University College Dublin and the Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork, has teamed up with Disney Research on a multi-year collaborative project looking at broadcasting of sporting events.

The research, which is intended to explore ways in which the use of multiple cameras can enhance broadcasting of major matches, got under way yesterday with 21 cameras hooked up at the National Hockey Stadium at UCD to cover the ladies hockey exhibition clash between Ireland and Germany.

“We chose hockey because we wanted to start with a difficult challenge and hockey is one of the fastest sports you can get out there on the field with such a small ball so we thought it would be a good one to start with,” Virginia Perry Smith, producer and RD manager at Disney Research, said.

“The plan is to send weekly footage back to our lab in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where it will be analysed in order to come up with better broadcasting techniques,” she added.

One of the individuals playing a lead role in the project is the Emmy Award-winning sports director Artie Kempner, the man in charge of both NFL and Nascar coverage on Fox Television.

He will provide feedback and insights to the research team on a continual basis.

The link-up between Disney, which has an 80 per cent stake in sports channel ESPN, and Clarity came about through the Dublin-born vice-president of the company’s research arm Dr Joe Marks.

The project forms part of a larger collaborative RD agreement between Clarity and Disney in which researchers are conducting advanced application-oriented research in sensor networks, wireless motion tracking, motion capture, Wi-Fi network modelling and human-computer interaction.

Clarity’s principal investigator, Prof Gregory O’Hare, said the research project represented a major coup for the centre.