Use of Augmented Reality in Sport Performance Visualization: Media Tools for Prosumers

This paper describes a proof of concept demonstrator and a prototype system for sport analytics, as well as data visualization designed for sport event spectators to get more insight on the athletes’ performance. The demonstrator highlights fully scalable Augmented Reality (AR) based sport analysis data visualization for engaging consumers and sports fans, and gives them a possibility to become more appealing prosumers. The aim is to combine elements of professional sport event visualization with the crowd generated content and social media communications. The AR sport demonstrator consists of two main parts: a) an AR Sport application, and b) AR Sport HTML5 Web service. The AR Sport application is based on the embedded sensor, which is worn by an athlete to collect acceleration data, and Android software that analyzes movement and produces visualizations about the sport performance. The AR Sport service uses the NUBOMEDIA cloud computing multimedia platform with AR capabilities and augments a user generated video stream with athlete specific overlay data. The spectator can use the AR Sport service via a mobile browser and view the augmented video stream on his/her mobile device. Keywords-augmented reality; sport analytics; visualization; multimedia cloud computing