Networked System for Volumetric Athletic Coaching in Augmented Reality

Traditional sports coaching involves face-to-face instructions with athletes or playingback 2D videos of athletes’ training. However, if the coach is not in the same area as the athlete, then the coach will not be able to see the athlete’s full body and thus cannot give precise guidance to the athlete, limiting the athlete’s improvement. To address these challenges, this paper proposes Augmented Coach, an augmented reality platform where coaches can view, manipulate and comment on athletes’ movement volumetric video data remotely via the network. In particular, this work includes a). Capturing the athlete’s movement video data with Kinects and converting it into point cloud format b). Transmitting the point cloud data to the coach’s Oculus headset via 5G or wireless network c). Coach’s commenting on the athlete’s joints. In addition, the evaluation of Augmented Coach includes an assessment of its performance from five metrics via the wireless network and 5G network environment, but also from the coaches’ and athletes’ experience of using it. The result shows that Augmented Coach enables coaches to instruct athletes from a distance and provide effective feedback for correcting athletes’ motions under the network.