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Software Watches Ball Games, Calls Plays

Willie D. Jones, IEEE Spectrum

To account for the obvious fact that at certain junctures several things are happening at once (for example, the batter running to first base, the first baseman running to get in the path of the batted ball so he can catch and then throw it, and the pitcher running to first base to await the throw from the first baseman), the software creates records of the players' movements on separate tracks.

A good analogy is the way music engineers record lead vocals on one track, background vocals on another, drums on a third, and so on.

Once the system settles on the most likely story line for a play, it uses that as the basis for a linguistic description of the actions in the video. Gupta notes that the system's phrasings sound like those of Frankenstein's monster. It uses only nouns (batter), verbs (run), and prepositions (toward first base).

There are several immediately evident applications for generating descriptions of videos automatically.

The operators of YouTube, who currently rely on producers to describe the content of the tens of thousands of videos uploaded onto the site each day, would be better able to categorize and call up videos based on search entries.

Gupta says the system would also be useful for video surveillance of places like airports and traffic intersections. Incidents can be tagged for later review by law enforcement as "unusual/suspicious" and brought to the attention of security personnel -- all without relying on humans to keep their eyes on video screens and remain attentive.

Get the original story here on IEEE Spectrum's website.

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