All your plays are belong to us - RFID chips on NFL players
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 12:14 pm
interesting stuff. Lots of pics, etc. in article.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015 ... -gambling/
excerpt:
Starting this week, this is the first NFL season in which all NFL stadiums are outfitted with cigar-box-sized receivers across the venue to triangulate the players' movements. These devices can track the players from up to 1,000 feet away, and at Levi's Stadium, there are 20 of these receivers. Players and the field officials are tracked at least 15 times a second. The technology can even tell which way a player is facing in real time.
For now, the ball isn't being tracked like it was in World Cup soccer matches last year. The NFL test-tracked the pigskin in last year's Pro Bowl (the NFL equivalent of an all-star game), but American football isn't like soccer. If the ball crosses the goal line in soccer, it's a goal. In the NFL, action is dead and spotted wherever the ball is being carried when the ball carrier's knee hits the ground when tackled. So while the NFL has instant replay to help officials, it isn't about to automate or dehumanize the game's officiating any further.
Further Reading
For the first time, sensors and a computer play umpire in a pro baseball game
Pitchf/x, a system you may have seen on ESPN, gives the homeplate ump an easy night.
"We're not looking to replace officials with robots," Matt Swensson, the NFL's senior director of emerging technology, told Ars.
According to Zebra, here's the data being tracked in real time:
• Player participation.
• Player groupings.
• Play formation and route running.
• Player speed.
• Player separation from another player.
• Yards player ran in a game, yards run before and after catch, yards run by quarter. Virtually an unlimited variety of relevant distance data in real time.
Stelfox showed Ars some of the real-time data generated during last year's Super Bowl on condition that it not be published. Looking through information collected, you could easily determine that when a certain player lined up in a certain spot, he was almost guaranteed to get the ball. So while top-level game film and old-school coaching could catch that, so does the Zebra technology—and it does so instantly.
"It's super valuable data," Stelfox said.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015 ... -gambling/
excerpt:
Starting this week, this is the first NFL season in which all NFL stadiums are outfitted with cigar-box-sized receivers across the venue to triangulate the players' movements. These devices can track the players from up to 1,000 feet away, and at Levi's Stadium, there are 20 of these receivers. Players and the field officials are tracked at least 15 times a second. The technology can even tell which way a player is facing in real time.
For now, the ball isn't being tracked like it was in World Cup soccer matches last year. The NFL test-tracked the pigskin in last year's Pro Bowl (the NFL equivalent of an all-star game), but American football isn't like soccer. If the ball crosses the goal line in soccer, it's a goal. In the NFL, action is dead and spotted wherever the ball is being carried when the ball carrier's knee hits the ground when tackled. So while the NFL has instant replay to help officials, it isn't about to automate or dehumanize the game's officiating any further.
Further Reading
For the first time, sensors and a computer play umpire in a pro baseball game
Pitchf/x, a system you may have seen on ESPN, gives the homeplate ump an easy night.
"We're not looking to replace officials with robots," Matt Swensson, the NFL's senior director of emerging technology, told Ars.
According to Zebra, here's the data being tracked in real time:
• Player participation.
• Player groupings.
• Play formation and route running.
• Player speed.
• Player separation from another player.
• Yards player ran in a game, yards run before and after catch, yards run by quarter. Virtually an unlimited variety of relevant distance data in real time.
Stelfox showed Ars some of the real-time data generated during last year's Super Bowl on condition that it not be published. Looking through information collected, you could easily determine that when a certain player lined up in a certain spot, he was almost guaranteed to get the ball. So while top-level game film and old-school coaching could catch that, so does the Zebra technology—and it does so instantly.
"It's super valuable data," Stelfox said.