Some info on the surround camera system at the superbowl

["Lawrence A. Rowe" <Rowe@bmrc.berkeley.edu>]

Carnegie Mellon Provides Special Effects for Super Bowl Broadcast 
By SCOTT CARLSON 


Some university-born technology was on display in last night's Super
Bowl. 

Television viewers saw it in a replay of Trent Dilfer's 38-yard
touchdown pass to fellow Baltimore
Raven Brandon Stokley. The camera started out facing the quarterback as
he dropped back and
wound up for the pass. Then the picture froze and wrapped around behind
him to show the path of the
pass. 

The technology is called EyeVision, and it was developed by CBS in
collaboration with Carnegie Mellon
University's Robotics Institute. 

About a year and a half ago, Larry Barbatsoulis and Craig Farrell, two
technical directors working for
CBS, decided they wanted to feature the Matrix-like special effects
during the big game, but they
needed a string of cameras that could move in synch, shooting the same
action from different vantage
points. Like the individual images in a cartoon, the subjects in the
picture need to be precisely and
consistently photographed; otherwise, the subjects will appear to "jump"
around the screen. 

Mr. Barbatsoulis went online looking for robotics programs and found one
at Carnegie Mellon. Since
July, Takeo Kanade, director of the Robotics Institute, has been working
full time on the project. On
Friday, he was testing the system at a very noisy Raymond James Stadium
in Tampa, Fla. 

"This is the most demanding project of my whole career as a scientist,"
Mr. Kanade yelled into his cell
phone as a loudspeaker above blared rock 'n' roll. "The idea of pointing
all of those cameras to one
spot on the field is easy to say, but to do that as precisely as they
want is not a simple thing to do." 

The technology uses 33 cameras, mounted on robotic arms and synchronized
to follow the focus of a
lead cameraman automatically and precisely. Sensors track the lead
camera's motion, zoom, and
focus, and relay that data back to the robot cameras. The robotic
components of the cameras were
manufactured especially for this project by the Mitsubishi Corporation. 

The system requires "surprisingly little" computer power, Mr. Kanade
says: One computer manages
the coordination and signals of the main camera, another computer is
assigned to each of the robot
cameras, and two computers measure and calibrate the positions of the
cameras relative to their
subjects. 

Each of the cameras is also connected to a digital-disk recorder. After
a playback-worthy pass, catch,
or tackle, a playback operator can home in on the action and freeze it
at a critical moment. 

"Then there is one last knob -- the revolve knob, which basically just
takes the output of any one
digital-disk recorder and puts it up on air," Mr. Barbatsoulis says. "So
if I have disk recorders 1 through
30, and they're all frozen on the same image at the same time, now all I
do is roll through the images
-- click, click, click -- and it looks like you're revolving around the
object." 

A number of parties hope to cash in on the project. In a press release
that highlighted several
technology-oriented tax breaks, Republican Gov. Tom Ridge touted
Pennsylvania's brains in lieu of its
brawn: "While the Steelers or Eagles won't be taking the field on
Sunday, Pennsylvanians still can be
proud that millions of football fans from around the world will enjoy
watching a Pennsylvania product." 

CBS, for its part, has formed partnerships with two video-processing
companies to sell the technology
to other broadcasters. Mr. Barbatsoulis predicts that it will be used in
everything from hockey to figure
skating. 

"In individual sports, like gymnastics, I could do a 360 around someone
doing a rings routine, or the
long jump, or a pole vault," he says. "Imagine freezing a guy who's
going backwards over the high
jump, then revolving around him to show his form." 

Anne Watzman, a spokeswoman for the university, says that Carnegie
Mellon isn't getting any hard
cash out of the deal. "There are also some contractual agreements that
aren't being publicized," she
said. Mr. Kanade also would not give the details of the financial
agreements. 

However, Ms. Watzman did note that CBS will give the university two
30-second commercials during
this year's National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I
men's-basketball tournament, in March. 
-- 
Professor Lawrence A. Rowe          Internet:  Rowe@BMRC.Berkeley.EDU
Computer Science Division - EECS       Phone: 510-642-5117
University of California, Berkeley       Fax: 510-642-5615
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776            URL: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~larry