CLARITY and the Irish Amateur Boxing Association
Amateur boxing is Ireland’s most successful Olympic sport and consistently produces medallists at Olympic, World, European competition both at senior and underage level. Much of the credit for the recent success goes down to the establishment of the High Performance Unit in Irish Boxing which was established in preparation for the Beijing Olympics.
The High Performance team in boxing is constantly striving for innovative ways and technologies to stay at the pinnacle of international competition and immediately saw the potential of the data gathering technologies developed by CLARITY researchers for tennis and hockey.
Of particular value to the boxers will be the ability of the coaches to provide instantaneous feedback to the boxers during training. Irish boxing has already forged close links with the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU where Dr Giles Warrington, a member of CLARITY, has acted as a sports physiologist and performance consultant to the High Performance Unit over a number of years.
Following on from the successful data gathering infrastructures at Tennis Ireland and Irish Hockey, CLARITY researchers were contacted by members of the Irish Ameuter Boxing Association (IABA) to specify equipment for a similar coaching framework at the IABA training facilities.
This infrastructure will consist of 12 cameras located around three boxing rings, located at the national boxing stadium in Dublin. Four cameras per ring will be installed around each ring, capturing sparing action from differing angles. Coaches can review action ringside with the athletes, using the recorded video to highlight technical or tactical issues. In order to specify the most appropriate cameras for the IABA installation, it was necessary to determine the optimum camera placement around each boxing ring and the required field of view (FOV) for each camera in the training facility.
However, due to the complexity of the installation site, a precise 3D model of the training facility building needed to be created in order to achieve this aim accurately. This 3D model incorporated all relevant structural objects from which we could hang cameras (such as punch bag rails, ceiling joists, rafters, etc.) and possible obstructions to a camera viewpoints (including lights, structural elements, etc.) -- see Figure "Comparison.png". Based on this data, the optimum camera equipment and placements were sourced. Figures 1/2/3/4.jpg illustrate the proposed camera positions around one of the IABA rings.
The IABA infrastructure is due to be installed in February 2011.
