Real-time ball-position measurement using multi-view cameras for live football broadcast

Abstract

We developed a robust ball-position-measurement system that can be used for actual football games. It measures the positions of a ball by integrating tracking results from multi-view cameras in real time. The positions can be used for calculating various statistical data and the production of live football broadcasts. Although several systems for visual object tracking have been proposed, tracking a ball during entire football games is still challenging due to many difficulties such as occlusion and illumination changes. We focused on the motion features of a ball object in addition to its appearance features. Tracking results from multi-view cameras are integrated in consideration of the reliability of these results, and the final ball position is robustly measured. The system was evaluated with videos shot during four professional football games held at multiple stadiums during the day and night. The evaluation results and an experimental demonstration indicate that the proposed system can robustly measure the position of a football in real time and is effective for producing live football broadcasts.