KOCHI: The research team of Federal Institute of Science And Technology (FISAT), Angamaly is jubilant as they have developed and contributed “Open Judo”, a review and analysis system designed to aid the jury in Judo competitions and the system was successfully used for 35th National Games.
This system was used in Judo competition that was held at VKN Menon indoor stadium Thrissur and it helped the jury to make quick decisions in many matches. In judo competitions no electronic devices were used so far for decision making and human decisions, sometimes even guess work and speculations were done which led to many controversies.
The State Judo Association officials in search of a tool similar to a ‘third umpire’ system used in cricket approached the research team in FISAT with their requirement. The research team took up the challenge and after several rounds of discussions, submitted a project report to the Association which was accepted.
Based on the project, a system was developed using c++. Open source computer vision libraries and open video codecs were used for the system and it was tested in local tournaments. Enhancements were made based ont he feedback from the experts and finally the system was successfully used in the National Games.
The seven member team together with the Staff Coordinator Pankaj Kumar and Physical Education director S Arun were present at the venue throughout the competitions and assisted the jury in handling the system.
The software received huge appreciations from many of the organisers and officials of 35th National Games Kerala 2015. The team also handled fixture generation, centralised score board control, result updation and generation, referee allocation.
The jury used the system to eliminate any doubts. The normal length of a judo match is five minutes and the system had to be such that it could be able to deliver views from all the cameras with minimal delay. The Open Judo used four High Definition cameras for a single mat. This gave the jury view from all the different angles. Table jury played multiple views of respective mats simultaneously.
“Open Judo” also have functionalities such as zoom in, zoom out, slow replaying, fast forwarding, marking etc. The research team consisted of Sherfin S, Aravind Murali, Vishnumohan K, Neeraj Jose, Kiran Thomas Varghese, A.A Aswathy, Anil P Joseph. They were guided by Pankaj Kumar G, assistant professor, Computer Science Department and Arun S, assistant professor, Physical education.
The system enables a higher degree of accuracy in decision making. Controversial situations can be analysed effectively while continuing the recording. This will help the table jury to make decisions even when the match is ongoing. The system is scalable and supports high end cameras as well as with low end devices. The quality of the camera and the number of cameras to be used can be determined by the tournament for which, the system is to be used.
The system consists of multiple “Open Judo” recording systems to avoid single point of failure. “All visuals captured by the cameras connected to the system is recorded and kept in backup libraries and can be used for future reference, and analysis.
The system which is going to be land mark in technology support for indoor games in internationallevel will be handed over to the National Judo Association after upgradtion as per the feedback from National Games officials so that it can meet International level system quality in game and player analysis and also as referee support system,” said Pankaj Kumar.