Beyond just human eyes, the game is also being tracked and watched by a ton of high-tech infrastructure.
For this Super Bowl, Sony and Zebra Technologies have brought a new, fully automated tracking environment, Hawk-Eye SkeleTRACK, into the game. This is the most advanced application of optical tracking in sports history. It tracks 29 distinct points on every player’s body, and the RFID sensors on the players’ shoulder pads and balls give detailed movement data and information called “Virtual Measurement.”
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This automated officiating gives exact measurements for certain plays and could put an end to the era of the “chain gang.” This technology feeds into the broadcast for “Next Gen Stats” and provides insights previously impossible to calculate.
This masterful application of advanced computer vision is just one way that high-tech infrastructure can be applied on such a large scale to what people might otherwise think of as a simple human competition.
