21 posts tagged with "Computer Vision"

That clip up top is match point of Shapovalov's win over Nadal, Montréal 2017 — the point that made his career. Our software's chart assembles on the top line; a human volunteer's runs below it. The human's line ends f+1* — forehand (f), closing in on the net (+), to a corner (1), a clean winner (). The software's ends with Shapovalov flat on his back, most labels still ?, its symbol for "couldn't tell." That gap is what this post closes.*

Could software, rules locked exactly as last tuned, watch a match it had never seen and write a chart a tennis fan would call the same match?

That clip up top: two court outlines on the same night-match frame. Red is the camera math borrowed as-is from the practice match; green is a fresh fit built from this match's own lines. Red drifts visibly off the real court — and its own accuracy numbers still said it looked fine.

Every setting this project has tuned so far was checked by the one person who tuned it. That's a chair umpire overruling his own call and then congratulating himself for getting it right — the call might be correct, but nobody should trust it just because he says so.

That clip up top: a single point charting itself live. A box tracks the ball, a second box flashes onto whichever player the software thinks just struck it, and a line of notation builds along the bottom, shot by shot. Late in the clip, watch that second box drift off the court and land on a spectator — hang onto that, it matters later.

Freeze a rally at the instant of contact, and sometimes you genuinely can't tell who just hit the ball — it's caught in the air, equally far from both players.

That clip up top: a whole point, serve included, charting itself — the tracking box locks onto the ball at the toss on its own, no clicking, and the notation string builds along the bottom. First time this pipeline has gone start to finish, and it's still a little rough.

Every rally tracked so far needed a person to draw a box around the ball by hand first. Fine once. Absurd sixty times. The fix: a fact about tennis itself. Every point begins the same way, and the software can now spot that beginning on its own.

That clip up top: every serve the pipeline felt sure about, clip after clip — which player served, and which side of the court, deuce or ad, flashed the instant the toss goes up.

Sixty broadcast clips are sitting there ready to be charted, and every one starts with the same problem: telling an actual tennis player apart from everyone else standing near a court who isn't one.