Emmy Award-winning Sports Director, Artie Kempner, pictured at the official launch of the Sports Visualisation Project
Disney Research and CLARITY: Centre for Sensor Web Technologies, have officially launched a multi-year collaborative research project in broadcasting and sports visualisation.
The research will explore ways in which use of multiple cameras can enhance the high-end broadcast of major athletic events. It will also examine how such systems can provide cost-effective opportunities for less well-known sports to develop larger fan bases, for youth sports to be viewed remotely, and for understanding how enhanced visuals and statistics can be used by coaches.
“We are very excited to be working with CLARITY in this research effort,” says Dr Joe Marks, Vice-President of Disney Research. “Disney Research was created to determine how the next generation of technologies will transform the businesses of The Walt Disney Company. This project could lead to groundbreaking broadcast technologies and opportunities for ESPN and The Walt Disney Company.”
The team will initially focus on the sport of field hockey for its analysis by outfitting the National Hockey Stadium at UCD with up to 21 cameras in order to capture a wide variety of information for evaluation by researchers on a weekly basis.
This initiative represents the fruition of extensive work,” states UCD Professor Gregory O’Hare, a Principal Investigator within CLARITY. “It is truly pioneering and establishes a state-of-the-art facility based at the National Hockey Stadium at University College Dublin.”
Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan TD, commented “The announcement of a new collaboration between Disney Research and CLARITY represents a very exciting development for innovation in Ireland. The Walt Disney Company is the world’s largest media and entertainment conglomerate, and its decision to form a strategic partnership with the Science Foundation Ireland-funded CLARITY Centre is an endorsement of the expertise and pioneering work being carried out in our laboratories and third-level institutions.”
This collaborative research project is supported by Disney Research, UCD, DCU and the IDA. This work is part of a larger collaborative research agreement between Disney Research and CLARITY, where the teams will conduct advanced application-oriented research in sensor networks, wireless motion sensing/tracking, motion capture, WiFi network modeling, and human-computer interaction.
CLARITY, a Science Foundation Ireland-funded Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET), is a partnership between UCD, DCU and Tyndall National Institute.
