Carnegie Mellon and Japanese Researchers Embed Camera Inside Football

Posted on February 27, 2013

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Electro-Communications (UEC) in Tokyo have embedded a camera inside a football. A GoPro HD camera was embedded in the side of a rubber-sheathed plastic foam football. The football can spin at 600 rpm, so the resulting video was an unwatchable blur. However, the researchers developed a computer algorithm that converts the raw video into a stable, wide-angle view. Additional work will be necessary to eliminate all of the distortion

Kris Kitani, a post-doctoral fellow in Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, says a football with an embedded camera may not be approved for regular play, but he believes the BallCam could be useful for TV, film or training purposes.

Kitani says in a release, "We're interested in how technology can be used to enhance existing sports and how it might be used to create new sports. In some cases, athletic play may be combined with arts or entertainment; a camera-embedded ball, for instance, might be used to capture the expressions on the face of players as they play catch with it."

Here are some videos from the football with embedded camera:


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