A Deep Learning and Computer Vision Based Multi-Player Tracker for Squash
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sports pose a unique challenge for high-speed, unobtrusive, uninterrupted motion tracking due to speed of movement and player occlusion, especially in the fast and competitive sport of squash. The objective of this study is to use video tracking techniques to quantify kinematics in elite-level squash. With the increasing availability and quality of elite tournament matches filmed for entertainment purposes, a new methodology of multi-player tracking for squash that only requires broadcast video as an input is proposed. This paper introduces and evaluates a markerless motion capture technique using an autonomous deep learning based human pose estimation algorithm and computer vision to detect and identify players. Inverse perspective mapping is utilized to convert pixel coordinates to court coordinates and distance traveled, court position, ‘T’ dominance, and average speeds of elite players in squash is determined. The method was validated using results from a previous study using manual tracking where the proposed method (filtered coordinates) displayed an average absolute percent error to the manual approach of 3.73% in total distance traveled, 3.52% and 1.26% in average speeds <9 m/s with and without speeds <1 m/s, respectively. The method has proven to be the most effective in collecting kinematic data of elite players in squash in a timely manner with no special camera setup and limited manual intervention.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".