Patent Application
20090111582
Play tracking in sporting events such as tennis, soccer, American football, rugby, ice hockey and basketball, is usually performed by people who provide a verbal or written commentary of events. This commentary may be broadcast to subscribers as voice or text.
Recently, automated tracking of some events has been disclosed. For example, a radio transmitter, such as a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag has been implanted in a ball and used to track the position of ball. Radio receivers (also called readers) may be placed at fixed locations around a playing area. In particular, radio receivers have been placed in a scoring area, such as a goal post, to record when the ball enters the scoring area.
Similarly, other technologies, such as the use of a magnetic ball or three-dimensional imaging, have been used to track ball positions with respect to the edges of a tennis court. These devices aid line judges.
While these approaches cover one aspect of the play, namely the position of the ball relative to the area of play, they do not provide automated play-by-play tracking of events.
The accompanying figures, in which like reference numerals refer to identical or functionally similar elements throughout the separate views and which together with the detailed description below are incorporated in and form part of the specification, serve to further illustrate various embodiments and to explain various principles and advantages all in accordance with the present invention.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
Before describing in detail embodiments that are in accordance with the present invention, it should be observed that the embodiments reside primarily in combinations of method steps and apparatus components related to tracking play in sporting events. Accordingly, the apparatus components and method steps have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.
In this document, relational terms such as first and second, top and bottom, and the like may be used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another entity or action without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. An element preceded by “comprises . . . a” does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence of additional identical elements in the process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.
It will be appreciated that embodiments of the invention described herein may comprise one or more conventional processors and unique stored program instructions that control the one or more processors to implement, in conjunction with certain non-processor circuits, some, most, or all of the functions associated with the tracking play in sporting events described herein. The non-processor circuits may include, but are not limited to, a radio receiver, a radio transmitter, signal drivers, clock circuits, power source circuits, and user input devices. As such, these functions may be interpreted as a method to track play in sporting events. Alternatively, some or all functions could be implemented by a state machine that has no stored program instructions, or in one or more application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), in which each function or some combinations of certain of the functions are implemented as custom logic. Of course, a combination of the two approaches could be used. Thus, methods and means for these functions have been described herein. Further, it is expected that one of ordinary skill, notwithstanding possibly significant effort and many design choices motivated by, for example, available time, current technology, and economic considerations, when guided by the concepts and principles disclosed herein will be readily capable of generating such software instructions and programs and ICs with minimal experimentation.
In one embodiment, the player wireless sensor nodes and the ball wireless sensor node use a ZigBee or WiFi communication protocol. The order of play is determined from successive locations of the plurality of players and the ball. For example, if the ball moves from a location close to a first player one team to a second player of the same team, it may be assumed that the ball has been passed from the first player to the second player.
Ball possession and scoring events may be determined from the location data.
Other methods may be used to determine the locations of the players and/or the location of the ball. For example, an optical, magnetic or infrared sensor may be used to detect scoring events.
A controller 120 is used to receive messages via antenna 122 from the wireless sensor nodes 106 carried by the players and from the wireless sensor node 108 carried by the ball. The controller may be a coordinating node of a ZigBee network, for example. Information in the messages is used to determine the locations of the players and the ball. The messages may contain a description of the location, or may contain information from which the location can be determined. Once the locations of the players and the ball are known, it may be determined which, if any, of the players possess the ball information. A play description may then be generated by translator 124. The play description may include which player, if any, possesses the ball, the players' identities, scoring events, and play sequences. The controller 120 is operable to disseminate the play description via a subscriber manager 126 and wired or wireless network 128 to a subscriber device 130. The subscriber device 130 may be a mobile device such as a mobile telephone or personal digital assistant (PDA). A play description may be followed by prior history data based on plays at that court specifically for that game, prior games at that court (e.g. United Center) or another court (e.g. Madison Square Garden), or plays from a specific team member during that game or another game on the same court or a different court. For this purpose, the controller 120 may operate as a court server that can port data to a common database 136 or other networked court servers 138. This allows concurrent and historical information to be retrieved.
The subscriber manager 126 services requests from subscriber devices and sends play information to the subscriber devices. The translator 124 may be integrated with the controller 120 or with the subscriber manager 126.
The controller 120 comprises a receiver 132, coupled to antenna 122, and a processing device 134. It may be located close to the area of play. The controller 120 may be a coordinating sensor node, for example. The processing device 134 may be directly coupled with the receiver 134 or coupled via a data network.
In operation, a subscriber may receive a play-by-play description of a sporting event, together with historical data, on a subscriber device 130. In one embodiment, a subscriber first downloads a description of an area of play to subscriber device 128. As play continues, the locations and identifiers of the first sensor nodes, carried by each of the players, and the location of the second sensor node, carried by the ball, are downloaded to subscriber device periodically. The subscriber device 130 may display a graphical visualization of the play, a textual description, or an audio description (generated automatically from a textual description using a text-to-speech engine). In the graphical visualization, the subscriber may assign an avatar to each identifier, so that the graphical visualization shows the area of play with avatars at the locations of the first sensor nodes and also shows the location of the ball.
The play description may be a text description in the form of a commentary, as described above, or it may be a data description that allows a subscriber device to generate a graphical visualization of play.
At block 218, the play description may be saved in a database or transmitted to other networked devices. Finally, at block 220, the play description is broadcast to subscribers. If play has ended, as depicted by the positive branch from decision block 222, the process terminates at block 224, otherwise flow continues to block 206, where more data streams are received.
In addition, it may also be determined when the ball enters a scoring area, and which player was the last player to posses the ball. Having determined this information, the translator 124 processor generates a text message 306 that provides a textual description of play events. In this example in
The subscriber device may be a mobile telephone, portable computer, personal digital assistant (PDA) or other electronic device.
The subscriber device may store play descriptions so that actions may be replayed. A subscriber can select to “replay” via avatars on their mobile device. They can choose the replay, based on time, score, or player, etc.
In a further embodiment, the play information is passed to another application or program. For example, the application may be a game, such as fantasy football, where a person's point score or other game related information is automatically updated dependent upon the play description.
In one embodiment, the play information includes background information, such as game and player statistics, other game scores and historical information, which is downloaded to the subscriber device at block 412. The background information may be displayed to the subscriber at block 414. At decision block 416, a check is made to determine is the play description should end. If so, as depicted by the positive branch from decision block 416, the process terminates at block 418. Otherwise, flow returns to block 408 and more play descriptions are downloaded to the subscriber device.
In general, both RFID tags and readers are considered to be special cases of wireless sensor nodes.
In the foregoing specification, specific embodiments of the present invention have been described. However, one of ordinary skill in the art appreciates that various modifications and changes can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention as set forth in the claims below. Accordingly, the specification and figures are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the present invention. The benefits, advantages, solutions to problems, and any element(s) that may cause any benefit, advantage, or solution to occur or become more pronounced are not to be construed as a critical, required, or essential features or elements of any or all the claims. The invention is defined solely by the appended claims including any amendments made during the pendency of this application and all equivalents of those claims as issued.
