Determining X,Y,Z,T biomechanics of moving actor with multiple cameras

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11694347-B2
Application number	US-202217752421-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 24, 2022
Priority date	Apr 15, 2015
Publication date	Jul 4, 2023
Grant date	Jul 4, 2023

Abstract

A plurality of tracking cameras is pointed towards a routine hovering area of an in-the-field sports participant who routinely hovers about that area. Spots within the hovering area are registered relative to a predetermined multi-dimensional coordinates reference frame (e.g., Xw, Yw, Zw, Tw) such that two-dimensional coordinates of 2D images captured by the tracking cameras can be converted to multi-dimensional coordinates of the reference frame. A body part recognizing unit recognizes 2D locations of a specific body part in the 2D captured images and a mapping unit maps them into the multi-dimensional coordinates of the reference frame. A multi-dimensional curve generator then generates a multi-dimensional motion curve describing motion of the body part based on the mapped coordinates (e.g., Xw, Yw, Zw, Tw). The generated multi-dimensional motion curve is used to discover cross correlations between play action motions of the in-the-field sports participant and real-world sports results.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A system for determining performance attributes comprising:
at least one processor configured for network communication with at least one server computer and/or at least one local computing device;
wherein the at least one processor is operable to:
receive images;
develop a motion curve;
identify frames and/or scan lines from the images associated with spatial points on the motion curve; and
display the frames and/or the scan lines on the at least one server computer and/or the at least one local computing device.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to develop the motion curve using respective temporal segment lengths from the images.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to intertwine and temporally dispose the images along a common timing reference and discard temporally adjacent images.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one server computer and/or the at least one local computing device is operable to display frames corresponding to an identified spatial point on the motion curve.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein a 3D position is determined by merging the images using a least squares or other error reduction technique.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein 3D coordinates of pre-registered references spots are known, and wherein when a pre-registered reference spot is captured in an image, coordinates of the image are automatically converted to the 3D coordinates.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein a database stores in-the-field biometric attributes including a heart rate, a breathing rate, a perspiration level, a blood pressure, a galvanic skin response, a topical temperature, and/or cranial electrical activity of a sports participant recorded at the same time as a play action activity.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the motion curve is a multi-dimensional motion curve.

9. A system for determining performance attributes comprising:
at least one processor configured for network communication with at least one server computer and/or at least one local computing device;
wherein the at least one processor is operable to:
receive images; and
develop a multi-dimensional (mD) motion curve.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein inconsistencies between the images are resolved based on biomechanical rules of nature or physical rules of nature.

11. The system of claim 9 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to intertwine and temporally dispose the images along a common timing reference and discard temporally adjacent images.

12. The system of claim 9 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to construct a four-dimensional (4D) model based on the images.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein the at least one processor stores cross associating points of motion relating to environmental conditions and sport event results with the 4D model in a database.

14. The system of claim 9 , wherein the at least one processor develops the mD motion curve within a mD space having at least a time (Tw) axis and three spatial and orthogonal coordinate axes (Xw, Yw, Zw).

15. The system of claim 9 , wherein a database stores data relating to a sports participant and data including sport event results, and wherein the database is operable to return data and images in response to a user query.

16. A system for determining performance attributes comprising:
at least one processor configured for network communication with at least one server computer and/or at least one local computing device;
wherein the at least one processor is operable to:
receive images;
determine a common timing reference for placing the images; and
intertwine the images such that the images are approximately disposed in a temporal sense along the common timing reference.

17. The system of claim 16 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to develop a multi-dimensional (mD) motion curve.

18. The system of claim 17 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to identify frames and/or scan lines that correspond with spatial points along the mD motion curve.

19. The system of claim 17 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to fit the mD motion curve with curve fit optimization techniques relative to the images where a subset of the images is given greater weight due to closeness and/or a better point of view (POV).

20. The system of claim 16 , wherein the at least one processor is operable to automatically determine the start and/or end of a play action activity and generate a unique ID label for the play action activity.

Assignees

• Sportsmedia Tech Corp

Inventors

• Perry Mark
• Spivak Joshua
• Zander Ryan A
• Goldbeck Graham Wei-Feng
• Painter James G

Classifications

• G06T7/292 Primary

  Multi-camera tracking · CPC title

• G06T2207/30241

  Trajectory · CPC title

• H04N23/90

  Arrangement of cameras or camera modules, e.g. multiple cameras in TV studios or sports stadiums · CPC title

• G06T2207/10012

  Stereo images · CPC title

• G06T2207/10016

  Video; Image sequence · CPC title