Towards Real-Time Analysis of Broadcast Badminton Videos
Nitin Nilesh Tushar Sharma Anurag Ghosh C. V. Jawahar
Analysis of player movements is a crucial subset of sports analysis. Existing
player movement analysis methods use recorded videos after the match is over.
In this work, we propose an end-to-end framework for player movement analysis
for badminton matches on live broadcast match videos. We only use the visual
inputs from the match and, unlike other approaches which use multi-modal sensor
data, our approach uses only visual cues. We propose a method to calculate the
on-court distance covered by both the players from the video feed of a live
broadcast badminton match. To perform this analysis, we focus on the gameplay
by removing replays and other redundant parts of the broadcast match. We then
perform player tracking to identify and track the movements of both players in
each frame. Finally, we calculate the distance covered by each player and the
average speed with which they move on the court. We further show a heatmap of
the areas covered by the player on the court which is useful for analyzing the
gameplay of the player. Our proposed framework was successfully used to analyze
live broadcast matches in real-time during the Premier Badminton League 2019
(PBL 2019), with commentators and broadcasters appreciating the utility.