The doorman's nightmare
On the bridges, they are making a new experience that combines artificial vision and football.
There’s no shortage of topics in football and one says that when the ball doesn’t want to go in, it won’t. That’s right, this system based on artificial vision will help players score goals. Real Sociedad has installed it in the fields of the bridges and they are testing it. These two cameras collect where the ball enters the door during penalty kicks and penalty kicks and the corresponding computer brain also extracts the speed of the ball with an accuracy of millimeters and an analysis of the trajectory.
The system has been developed by the company Visiona, a spin-off of the Public University of Navarra. Here, the nanotechnology, sensorics or social engineering projects are located in the Jeronimo de Ayanz R&D Centre in Pamplona. Researchers are university professors, experts in artificial vision. Their job is to make machines see, but how do they do that?
Jeser Zalba, UPNA researcher/Visiona: These are the artificial eyes of our system. That's the way it is with bridges. There we have installed two cameras, here they carry optics and receive images at a relatively high speed, 60 or 70 frames per second and both are synchronized. What we finally get with the cameras is the numerical expression, the mathematical expression of the images.
A wide variety of uses can be generated from this information. For example, the three-dimensional digital image may tell a robot how and where to grab an object. It is also possible to measure the quality of the parts by comparison with the model or to indicate the degree of wear to which the wheels of a train have been subjected. What’s more, 3D printers can make copies of what you’ve seen artificially. This reads objects that move again. They plan to use it in radiation therapy to make sure that, even if it moves, the patient always receives the rays in the same and exact place.
Jeser Zalba, UPNA researcher/Visiona: With this system we do between 20 and 30 readings per second. We create a cloud of 3D dots in the time it takes for a person to blink.
This system uses a camera and structured light, but the machines also have other ways of seeing it: with the help of the laser, several cameras working together... On the bridges they use the latter with two devices. The system takes advantage of the viewing triangulation, that is, it works by unifying the information that each camera receives.
Jeser Zalba, UPNA researcher/Visiona: For people to understand, it is similar to the hawk-eye system used in tennis. They use several cameras to reconstruct the trajectory of the ball. What we do with the two cameras of the Visionas system is to read the last part of the path that the ball makes, to know in what exact place of the door it enters and at what speed.
For this, both eyes, both cameras must look the same: they must be calibrated beforehand with the help of this panel. From here the location and speed information comes out and researchers have created a computer program or application to manage this information. The players will be football coaches and coaches.
Amalia Ortiz, NUPeko ikerlaria/Visiona:Entrenatzaileak diseinatzen du trebatze-saioa. In the app you specify parameters such as the number of players that will participate, where they will launch, from the penalty point, 20 meters from the door to the left, whatever you want. You can use these templates to determine the site and these others to decide the score. It can also include other variables such as whether the field is wet, whether the players are tired or rested. All this will then be used to evaluate the launches.
The idea is that all this information will help Real Sociedad’s technicians in the preparation of training sessions or strategic decisions: decisions with an objective basis, more correct in principle. The information is stored in a database for later statistical purposes. These lines show the number of points each player has scored in the shots. The trend is immediately visible if it has worsened or improved and is easy to compare with other pitchers.
Alfonso Azurza, technician at Real: It is true that football is an open game, very open and that there are many variables that affect performance but for example in the ball stop games we have control, in this we can influence both the training and the evaluation and it is advisable to be more objective.
This attempt at artificial vision is not the first time that Real has used technology. In the rations, they use a control system installed in the matches. Track each player by collecting physical and tactical data. More technology in training: GPS, photoelectric cells, not to mention the human factor.
Alfonso Azurza, technician at Real: In the end you have a lot of data but if the player is not confident or to throw a penalty, because whoever does it well has fatigue, maybe someone else will. But we still think that the more objective we are in the process and in the development, the better each one will be.
The system is still in place, but Real’s technical managers are beginning to think about how to make the most of artificial vision. With more cameras it will be possible to observe the moves in motion: the machine would accurately measure the extent to which they are long passes, halves or finishes.
However, it must first be seen that artificial vision has a real impact on the results. Those who have developed the system think so. They have studied the first division in Spain and the matches that have been played in the last five years of the English Premier League and have seen that more than 60% of the matches end up tied or with a single goal difference. And the difference between maintaining or lowering the level is almost a single point each year. So hitting a penalty or missing a shot can lead you to heaven or hell.
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