A low-cost real-time tracker of live sport events

Abstract

We present a low-cost prototype system for real-time tracking of players during a sport event. The system was tested on recordings of a squash singles match. Two players are visible from a bird's eye perspective as they move around the squash court. System recovers the position of each of the players on each frame and presents the results in real time on the computer screen. A method for automatic tracker initialization is proposed. Our setup makes a processing speed of up to ten frames per second possible, using low-cost, widely available PC hardware.