Our paper titled “One-shot Team Recognition and 3D Pose Estimation of Cyclists for Augmented Reality Visualization” won the Distinguished Paper Award at the 2nd International Sports Analytics Conference & Exhibition (ISACE) 2025. This research was part of the VENTOUX-project.
Advanced computer vision and machine learning technologies transform how we experience sports events. This research focuses on enhancing the viewing experience of cycling races by automatically identifying teams from helicopter footage. It employs a multi-stage pipeline that tackles challenges such as rapid motion and similar team uniforms. Initially, cyclists are detected and tracked. Team recognition is then performed using a one-shot learning approach based on Siamese neural networks, achieving a classification accuracy of 85% on a test set composed of previously unseen teams. This method reduces the need for extensive labeling. Additionally, temporal post-processing techniques, such as applying a moving average to confidence scores, further enhance classification performance. These methods ensure reliable identification of teams and track their presence throughout the race footage. Furthermore, we integrate 3D pose estimation to generate augmented reality (AR) overlays that display rider-specific information, such as names and speeds, enhancing the broadcast’s informational value. The combination of advanced computer vision and AR showcases new possibilities for improving live sports broadcasts, particularly in challenging environments like road cycling.
Sports analytics is the application of AI, data science, psychology, and smart devices to improve sports performance, strategy, and decision-making. It involves collecting, processing, and interpreting data from various sources such as video footage, performance metrics, and scouting reports, and using this information to gain insights into player and team performance, prevent injury, and help coaches and team managers to make more informed decisions and optimize their resources to achieve better results.
There are various sports analytics seminars, satellite workshops (associated with major AI and Data Science conferences), and regional conferences (e.g., MIT Sloan Sports Analytics). The vision of this new International Sports Analytics Conference and Exhibition (ISACE) series is to bring leading academics, researchers, coaches, psychologists, managers and technologists together to advance state-of-the-art of sports analytics.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
