Impact of internet of everything technologies in sports - football

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceInternet of Things has been one of the hottest technology concepts of recent years. It started with the wearable devices and any digital device connected online and evolved to a web connected network linking everything from devices, sensors, machines, people, processes, companies, and so on, creating the Internet of Everything concept. There are many application areas, but one stands out due to its popularization and importance to industry, Sports and specifically Football. Football has been reinventing itself with the implementation of technology, recreating the formula used in the United States Major Sports, where technology helps to enhance the spectacle experience, expand game analysis by coaches, players, and media, provide live refereeing, and improve health recoveries and detection of injuries. This research is a state-of-situation regarding technology in football, recognizing the presently used technologies and what could be implemented, and ultimately measuring the impact of these devices in Football

Interactive co-construction to study dynamical collaborative situations.

International audienceThe purpose of this paper is to present the principle of our framework CoPeFoot dedicated to the study of dynamic and collaborative situations. This research work aims to instate learning by the co-construction of such situations. The article starts by recalling constraints induced by such situations. Next, it introduces interactive co-construction assumption and their implementation in CoPeFoot. In fact, this implementation is based on two steps in CoPeFoot: firstly, machine learning for behavior modeling, using imitation of real users and secondly, refining this behavior by using interaction between the user and the simulation, enhanced by additional information called augmented virtuality. In order to do that, CoPeFoot lies on context base reasoning which is presented. The article ends by a first evaluation of this work

A Survey of Deep Learning in Sports Applications: Perception, Comprehension, and Decision

Deep learning has the potential to revolutionize sports performance, with applications ranging from perception and comprehension to decision. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of deep learning in sports performance, focusing on three main aspects: algorithms, datasets and virtual environments, and challenges. Firstly, we discuss the hierarchical structure of deep learning algorithms in sports performance which includes perception, comprehension and decision while comparing their strengths and weaknesses. Secondly, we list widely used existing datasets in sports and highlight their characteristics and limitations. Finally, we summarize current challenges and point out future trends of deep learning in sports. Our survey provides valuable reference material for researchers interested in deep learning in sports applications

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Implementing the technology shift from 2D to 3D: insights and suggestions for umpire educators

Effective methods to improve decision-making in sports officiating, particularly with the current and ongoing issues with in-person training, means new remote training methods must be developed. Traditional training of officials occurs primarily as “in-person coaching” at matches, with supporting training manuals and 2D broadcast analysis. However, live matches present difficulties in implementation, while manuals and 2D broadcast videos may not sufficiently ensure learning transfers to real situations. Due to its ease of use, first-person perspective, and ability to analyze live and post-event remotely, 360° virtual reality video technology (360° VR) offers an alternative technological solution for developing decision-making accuracy for sports officials across multiple sports. This study sought to assess the ecological validity (EV) of using 360° VR technology to enable remote teaching of decision-making. Decision-making quality and accuracy in softball umpires were similar when using 360° VR and the traditional method (2D broadcast footage), but 360° VR received significantly higher EV values than the 2D broadcast videos. In addition, interviewed participants expressed excitement about using 360° VR to augment traditional umpiring manuals and rulebooks. The results show that 360° VR has the potential to enhance or replace traditional remote learning methods for decision-making in softball umpires and allow softball learning to reach a much wider umpire audience

RoboCup@Home: Analysis and results of evolving competitions for domestic and service robots

Scientific competitions are becoming more common in many research areas of artificial intelligence and robotics, since they provide a shared testbed for comparing different solutions and enable the exchange of research results. Moreover, they are interesting for general audiences and industries. Currently, many major research areas in artificial intelligence and robotics are organizing multiple-year competitions that are typically associated with scientific conferences. One important aspect of such competitions is that they are organized for many years. This introduces a temporal evolution that is interesting to analyze. However, the problem of evaluating a competition over many years remains unaddressed. We believe that this issue is critical to properly fuel changes over the years and measure the results of these decisions. Therefore, this article focuses on the analysis and the results of evolving competitions. In this article, we present the RoboCup@Home competition, which is the largest worldwide competition for domestic service robots, and evaluate its progress over the past seven years. We show how the definition of a proper scoring system allows for desired functionalities to be related to tasks and how the resulting analysis fuels subsequent changes to achieve general and robust solutions implemented by the teams. Our results show not only the steadily increasing complexity of the tasks that RoboCup@Home robots can solve but also the increased performance for all of the functionalities addressed in the competition. We believe that the methodology used in RoboCup@Home for evaluating competition advances and for stimulating changes can be applied and extended to other robotic competitions as well as to multi-year research projects involving Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

The design-by-adaptation approach to universal access: learning from videogame technology

This paper proposes an alternative approach to the design of universally accessible interfaces to that provided by formal design frameworks applied ab initio to the development of new software. This approach, design-byadaptation, involves the transfer of interface technology and/or design principles from one application domain to another, in situations where the recipient domain is similar to the host domain in terms of modelled systems, tasks and users. Using the example of interaction in 3D virtual environments, the paper explores how principles underlying the design of videogame interfaces may be applied to a broad family of visualization and analysis software which handles geographical data (virtual geographic environments, or VGEs). One of the motivations behind the current study is that VGE technology lags some way behind videogame technology in the modelling of 3D environments, and has a less-developed track record in providing the variety of interaction methods needed to undertake varied tasks in 3D virtual worlds by users with varied levels of experience. The current analysis extracted a set of interaction principles from videogames which were used to devise a set of 3D task interfaces that have been implemented in a prototype VGE for formal evaluation

Local Positioning Systems in (Game) Sports

Position data of players and athletes are widely used in sports performance analysis for measuring the amounts of physical activities as well as for tactical assessments in game sports. However, positioning sensing systems are applied in sports as tools to gain objective information of sports behavior rather than as components of intelligent spaces (IS). The paper outlines the idea of IS for the sports context with special focus to game sports and how intelligent sports feedback systems can benefit from IS. Henceforth, the most common location sensing techniques used in sports and their practical application are reviewed, as location is among the most important enabling techniques for IS. Furthermore, the article exemplifies the idea of IS in sports on two applications