Technology is a beacon to the future but at Croke Park yesterday it also showed its value as a protector of the past and present.
The Replay Project is the result of three years of research aimed at capturing and storing European traditional sports techniques for present and future players. This includes Hurling and Gaelic Football with players having been flown to the UK, dressed in sensors and having their movements captured in the same way as Lionel Messi has for Fifa16.
The project has been undertaken by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, a grouping of the major Irish Universities.
It involves cutting edge sensor technology and data analytics combined to create, for the first time, a digitised ‘library of movement’ for use by athletes and coaches.
Three years ago researchers at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics set about capturing and preserving the techniques of Irish traditional sports so that future generations will always have access to the moves unique to their games heritage. The project was funded by the EU, in recognition of its responsibility to protect sports heritage in all member states.
“Twenty years ago the last remaining player of a traditional French variant of lawn tennis passed away. With him passed knowledge of how to play the game, which is now functionally extinct. All around the world traditional games are dependent on players to keep them alive, and unlike languages or artefacts, the key elements of these games have not, until now, been captured and stored for future generations,” said Scientific Coordinator Professor Noel O’Connor of the Insight Centre explaining the motivation for this project.
“It’s hard to imagine that hurling or camogie will ever go extinct, but without the kind of investment that goes into homogenous international games like soccer, any traditional game could potentially die out.”
Insight’s researchers have gone on to create accessible technology that today’s players can use to improve their game.
It also holds significant promise for affordable gaming development, physiotherapy and motion capture for other physical pursuits like dancing.
Up to now technology like this has only been available to big budget film producers and game developers. The kind of CGI expertise that we see in movies like the new Jungle Book or in games like FIFA16 has drawn ever closer to the experience of watching live action and while the pixelated movement of previous games in GAA fell someway short of perfect that could all be about to change.
Insight is developing increasingly sensitive systems to capture the tiniest movements and translate them into readable data for use by a multitude of potential users.
In a world’s first, the project arranged for highly accurate motion capture of GAA skills for future analysis and storage. Male and female athletes including Clare Hurler Shane O’Donnell were flown to a specially constructed studio in Oxford, wore a ‘skin suit’ fitted with multiple sensors and performed under the watch of infrared cameras. Their movements were then translated into 3D avatars that will appear on screen.
It’s the same technology used by FIFA to represent the moves of Lionel Messi on an Xbox, applied for the first time to GAA athletes. The motion captured skills will be used initially to improve coaching and player education resources but the potential is also there for a wider application in the growing world of where Sport and Technology meet.
