Simi Reality Motion Systems: Marker-Less Motion Capture

The final result of a particular game in any sport takes into account many factors such as team tactics, the fitness of players, and strategies that orchestrate the play buildup. One very important aspect is the perfect execution of sport-specific movements to reach highest speed, force, and precision to make the difference in a game. Consider the star pitcher of a baseball team: It takes rigorous training sessions and preparation for him to execute his throw on such high levels during games and to be as consistent as the team expects him to be. Team coaches, physiotherapists, and trainers keep track of the performance and fitness of these players, as a single oversight in monitoring their fatigue levels could injure them and cost the team an entire season. In order to avoid such mishaps and improve the player performances in games, Simi Reality Motion Systems provides image-based motion capture and analysis systems that allow sports professionals to monitor a player’s movements and performances throughout the season. “We have developed solutions that enable clients to monitor players’ detailed movements and fitness levels continuously while supporting them with insights to carry out player analysis,” adds Philipp Russ, COO, Simi Reality Motion Systems.


"Our technology enables us to obtain players’ movement data from any location, be it a training session or the world championship"

The company has developed marker-less motion capture technologies to record a player’s movement and deliver video based analytic solutions for sports analysis, medical applications, and media distribution. A technique such as this provides undisrupted performance analysis workflows in real world with the use of high-performance cameras and customized software, providing exact biomechanical data measuring 400 times per second. “Our technology is all about presenting information in the most detailed manner possible to our viewers, whether it is to a coach of a sports team or a media distribution network. We provide equipment and software solutions that capture the minutest aspects of a player’s movement,” elaborates Russ.

Overhauling Motion Capture

By observing various movements and actions on the pitch, Simi answers questions related to actions causing injuries and the performances of players. The company utilizes high-speed, high-definition cameras to record a player’s movements and produce 3D data by its own marker-less motion capture algorithms out of this.

These data sets are then fed into an analytics engine, to predict injuries or performance development. The ingenuity of such an approach is that Simi’s solution neither requires a marker to be placed on a player nor utilizes additional motion detection sensors to trace the movements of players, as opposed to traditional tracking methodologies that employ complex equipment and devices on the athlete. Instead, Simi has devised a solution which only needs video footage, converting into 3D kinematic data that can be applied to various operations across industries such as medicine, sports, animation, multimedia and automotive. “Our technology enables us to obtain players’ movement data from any location, be it a training session or the world championship, whereas conventional methods require sensors on the athlete, impossible in most real-life situations. Other marker-less approaches rely on depth-sensing cameras, which have practical limitations such as the distance of the camera from object, the speed of recording (higher frame rates) and specialized equipment, not possible in a stadium installation for real games,” explains Russ. Simi’s approach to marker-less tracking technology generates full 3D biomechanical models just out of the color camera images. Since Simi traditionally comes from sport biomechanics the algorithms have been tested and evaluated for highest accuracy.

While there are many solutions in sports already providing tactic analysis data, for example Simi Scout, there has never been the possibility in real games to judge individual movement performance that can make the difference to winning or losing. There just hasn’t been technology to provide this level of detail in real life situations. With Simi’s technology now the questions not only can be answered for where a player is and what he is doing, but how exactly is he doing it. In most tactic analysis today this can also be of great help since the annotation of what action has happened is very time consuming and could be fully automated by detailed 3D movement data.

Russ narrates an analogy that describes the applicability of Simi’s markerless motion caption systems. “When you watch Lionel Messi play football, you often wonder if what is happening on pitch is magic. The way he moves with the ball leaves most opponents awestruck. But, with our motion capture technique, one can observe the body language of a player to predict the movements that he or she would make progressively. Coaches can better train their players to avoid committing the mistakes they naturally would against players like Messi.

It becomes easier for them to devise tactics and combat certain opponents by analyzing the game. Coaches are privileged with the ability to analyze how a player would move in a given situation, how he or she would dodge opponent attacks and counter the movements of other players from the slow motion video footage, and then, instruct players to combat challenging instances. This technique also helps players to avoid injuries and suitably train better with the team.”

The Diversity of the Simi Portfolio

“In the past, there were not many engineers or operators capable of utilizing the systems that we had developed for the sports industry. They were mainly used for research purposes where the post-processed data would be utilized for analysis. We have changed that scenario by developing content for both analysis and media consumption,” explains Russ. Simi bridges the technological gap between content creators and sports personnel by customizing its portfolio to cater to various operational requirements.

The company classifies its offerings in two segments, a cloud-based model for managed service applications and a portfolio for media partners. The cloud-based solution employs a customized system with an ‘individualized’ capture application. Once the data is recorded with the type of movements that a client would want to capture, it is uploaded to Simi’s servers where the company processes the information on their behalf. By detailing all the information categorically through a dashboard, Simi consolidates video recording, data compilation, and performance analysis of players, thereby channeling them through a single pipeline. Likewise, the second model is more optimized for media distribution where publication houses would require data from specific sports events in the fastest manner possible—within few seconds after an event takes place—after which they would utilize it across their distribution network.

“We have developed a technology, which is now able to transform the science that has existed in laboratories and universities for over 25 to 30 years and utilize it for real-world applications,” highlights Russ. Through its research, Simi provides insights into incident detection that enables an observer to comprehend the causality of events occurring on the pitch. This allows sports authorities to monitor players’ actions, change in their positions, and their movements before an incident occurs. The functionality could potentially shed light on events that skip the naked eye, providing sports analysts an effective methodology of determining the causality of an incident. Simultaneously, the company is also venturing into autonomous driving, which would allow them to record a driver’s movements for security and control functions. These advancements open up an entirely new paradigm for Simi as marker-less tracking technology transcends into newer areas of application.