May 13, 2019

Handball Virtual Reality Field Trial Produced from Motion Sensing in Large Area

NTT, NTT WEST, and the Kumamoto Prefectural Government have started the trial of a motion sensing technology for application to a new sports viewing experience in women's handball events in Kumamoto prefecture to build momentum for the 2019 Women's Handball World Championships. This trial is being conducted with the cooperation of the OMRON handball club "Pindys" in Kumamoto prefecture.
In this trial, a person experiences the dynamic movements of active players as if he or she is standing on the handball court by means of 3D, 360-degree video synthesized from the motions of all players on the court. These motions are analyzed by Dynamic Field 3D Motion Sensing Technology, which is currently under research and development at NTT Media Intelligence Laboratories.

Dynamic Field 3D Motion Sensing Technology

Dynamic 3D motion information of multiple persons in a wide real space is acquired from multiple videos cameras with high accuracy. By using NTT's unique pose estimation on a deep learning framework combined with 3D motion analysis, we can analyze the 3D motions of multiple people with high accuracy even in complex scenes such as subject intersections in a wide space.
In motion capture used in conventional movie production, the target was limited to a specific environment and people, but with this technology, even in a scene where multiple people are moving around in a large space, the 3D info of each person can be obtained.

Through the knowledge obtained from this trial, we will improve the accuracy and automation of motion sensing technically and further accelerate activities for promoting sports and entertainment events using ICT.

Figure 1 Virtual Reality for trial