5VREAL: EMG / Gravity Media Italy and Vodafone contribute to innovative sports analysis and fan engagement project By Roberto Landini, Italian Correspondent Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - 08:48
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Combining artificial intelligence, 5G and video analytics systems to enhance technical match analysis and enrich audience engagement, the 5G Volley Reality Experience & Analytics Live (5VREAL) Project was conceived and implemented by a partnership of companies and research institutes including the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, EMG / Gravity Media Italy, the Bruno Kessler Foundation, Small Pixels, and Vodafone Italy.
As part of this project, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano recently led an experiment on systems using AI to recognise phases and parameters of volleyball games and to generate data associated with video to support the development of game tactics or to enhance fan engagement by producing real-time highlights with augmented reality graphics for inclusion in the event's coverage.
In the experiment, conducted at the Trento Sports Hall during an event involving women's volleyball team Trentino Volley, remote broadcast production techniques and technologies based on 5G networks played a dual fundamental role. First, they enabled the acquisition of images and their transfer to the Edge Cloud hosting AI-based systems. Second, they enabled the creation of real-time highlights and made them available for playout in the control room.
The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano led a consortium of entities and companies engaged in developing technologies to achieve the project's goals. In particular, the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK) and UniBZ focused on developing AI-based systems for analysing game phases. Small Pixels developed and provided its AI-based technology to enhance the video quality of compressed content. Vodafone installed a dedicated indoor coverage network at the Trento Sports Hall, leveraging the capacity and flexibility of its 5G network to ensure the required performance for mobile devices located there. It also established a private network connecting these devices to Edge Computing resources set up at the MCR in Cologno Monzese by EMG / Gravity Media Italy.
EMG / Gravity Media Italy built the entire technological infrastructure of the data centre, provided its production facilities, and implemented a low-latency remote contribution and production system based on Vodafone's 5G Remote Media Production Platform.
The complete process developed by the partners enabled the filming of a volleyball match using four cameras connected via 5G to the remote production system of the edge data centre in Cologno and EMG / Gravity Media Italy's Nova 126 mobile unit. Alongside broadcast cameras, the event was filmed with three smartphones, also connected via 5G to the Edge Cloud in Cologno, to demonstrate the feasibility of AI-based tracking even when the event is not produced for television broadcasting.
The AI-based systems' processing results were displayed on a tablet showing the event video and the game data extracted by the systems. Clips enriched with augmented reality were integrated into the event's programme as highlights.
The extracted data and generated content could also be consulted post-event for game analysis to support strategy development.
5G network solution
The experiment benefited from Vodafone's 5G network solution designed for remote video contribution and production applications, extended with an Edge Computing node at the MCR data centre in Cologno Monzese by EMG / Gravity Media Italy. To maximise performance in terms of low latency and reliability, the Edge Computing infrastructure was made directly accessible to devices enabled on Vodafone's 5G network through a direct and virtually dedicated connection.
This approach allowed devices equipped with specific non-commercial SIMs to utilise advanced features such as network slicing, which allocates the necessary resources to ensure substantial bandwidth (especially in upload) and extremely low latency levels. These resources are essential for enabling real-time transmission of high-quality video streams over a wireless network.
Additionally, these devices enjoyed a direct and dedicated connection, almost as if there were a direct line between the indoor coverage apparatus in the sports hall and EMG's Edge Cloud. This was made possible by the high capacity and evolved functionalities of Vodafone's advanced 5G infrastructure.
To maximise its network's performance for audiovisual contribution and production uses, Vodafone contributed to developing dedicated devices, acquired and managed by EMG Italy for this occasion. These devices, comparable to backpacks commonly used in the broadcast sector, represent a significant evolution as they feature superior audio/video functionalities compared to what's currently available on the market, integrating technologies such as bonding with precise operator network integration.
As a result, wherever a connection is established in Italy via one or more SIMs, data reaches the Cologno Monzese data centre in an average time of about 15 milliseconds without traversing the internet, thus avoiding impacts on bandwidth availability and latency. The connection characteristics (bandwidth and latency) depend only on the radio access quality, which is enhanced by the terminal's features.
During the experiment, exceptional access performance was achieved, allowing terminals to operate with connectivity exceeding 700Mb/s in download and 100Mb/s in upload, with transport latencies consistently below 20ms.
The video contribution latency, thanks to the encoding and decoding performance of the devices and the data centre systems, was consistently under 150ms, enabling any contribution or remote production activity.
