Augmented Reality And The Future Of Sport
Posted: December 29th, 2009
Author: lester
Some several months back I blogged about an augmented reality solution called Seer that was implemented at Wimbledon. The solution was ingenious, use your Android device to find out how long the bathroom or food lines are as well as get relevant information on the games in play. Scores, statistics that type of thing all from the comfort of your seat. Not only do you know what is happening with the game but you now the perfect time to go to the bathroom and grab a hotdog on the way back.
EYEPLY are a start-up company that are looking at changing the way we view sports by combining a similar augmented reality solution for all sporting events.
EYEPLY - The future of sport
Golf is an obvious candidate that would benefit from such a solution. If you are sitting at the 7th green is hard to know what is happening at other locations on the course, with an EYEPLY augmented reality solution you would be able to point your device in the general direction of the hole you are interested in and get up to date scores and player information on the game taking place. In the video below EYEPLY talk about solutions for baseball games, when a player steps up to the plate you are able to click on him and get his relevant stats. If you are fanatical about a sport you want to know everything about a player.
When I saw the Seer video I thought it would be fantastic if the technology could be applied to a football match. Being able to click on a player, get his stats, how far he as run, how many passes he has completed etc all live during a game would be pretty amazing. Especially when you haven’t seen that player before. I have a friend who occasionally works for various TV stations on football events overlaying the graphics that show scores and other game stats. A lot of information is tracked in real-time by various companies and is available at the touch of a button. The data is there, the question is how do you make that information available and useful to be consumed by the public.
Could this be the future of sports?
Static games like golf or tennis are somewhat easy to manage as the players exact location is not that important, but in an augmented reality world with fast paced games like football the problem is how do you track 22 players around a pitch in real-time and determine who is who? If you want to combine a Sims style icon over every player on the field then you need some pretty good tracking. Interestingly the EYEPLY guys say they are working with a company who have the tracking technology to do this so perhaps at next years world cup we’ll see some really cool augmented reality solutions.
EYEPLY Video
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Nice stuff! Is it also possible to use that in boxing and similar sport?
Thanks for the question, DingM.
Absolutely. Boxing would be a great fit as well. Truly, any sports, entertainment, or even major shopping events. As long as there are existing data sources associated with points and persons of interest, the EYEPLY service can enhance social networks and media networks within any of the locations once enabled.
Check our site periodically for updates, and feel free to forward your information via our Contact page if you would like to stay in touch.
We have applied Augmented Reality to skiing. Soon to skiing events.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na9_HoAUJQU&feature=player_embedded
Goodmorning and congratulations for your web-site, it is very nice.
My name is Gianmarco and I am a student of the University of Computer Science in Bologna (Italy).
I would like to ask what are for you the main cons of Augmented reality, I think for example that Twitter360 could violate our privacy.
Thank you for the attention.
Gianmarco (My blog for my Thesis only in Italian http://augmentedrealitymarketing.wordpress.com/)
@Gianmarco
Hi, with twitter as I understand it you have to agree to share your location so you should know what you are getting into before hand.
The danger with privacy comes when someone else shares data without your consent. For example your friend comes over to your house and twitters from his mobile phone. “at Gianmarco house looking at his new 50″ plasma TV and blueray dvd player”.
Chances are, you probably wouldn’t want a geo-tagged tweet telling the world about your TV and DVD player.
I blogged about privacy here no so long ago, you’ll find a link to the post here.
http://www.augmentedplanet.com/2009/11/do-you-care-about-privacy/
Hi Lester thank you so much for your quickly reply.
Yes, I totally agree with you, the danger is coming when someone want to share data without my consent.
But in general what kind of cons may have Augmented Reality?
Sorry for disturb.
Gianmarco