The tech developments include an augmented match view, enabling fans to see real-time insights about players’ performances during a game
French telecoms giant orange has demoed a series of 5G-enabled in-stadium innovations, including an impressive ‘augmented match’ app to enhance fan engagement during games.
The innovations were shown to press and invited guests at the Orange Velodrome in Marseille during Olympique de Marseille v Lens Ligue 1 match on 22 October.
Orange has been working on each tech development at its permanent ‘5G Lab’ within the velodrome.
The standout innovation, from a fan engagement point of view, is an as-yet unnamed app orange is calling the ‘Augmented Match’. This enables fans to hold their 5G smartphone up and view the live action on the pitch while accessing live, real-time insights into player performance.
Orange captures players’ data via a small number of unobtrusive cameras high up in the stadium and uses the data to display an assortment of insights that are superimposed on the fan’s smartphone.
You can view live heatmaps of the players movements, and details of their shots, dribbles, passes and so on. The data is very low latency, so the mixed reality graphics are able to seamlessly augment on top of the live location of the players.
The innovation uses 5G 26GHz with Sony’s experimental smartphone, Edge Computing with AWS, Computer vision with StatsPerform and mixed reality with Immersiv.io
Asked about when a variation of the app might be available to fans to use for themselves, Orange Business Services head of innovation and partnership, Guillaume Chabas, said that once connectivity across stadiums offered consistent user experiences, the app itself would be ready to go. This connectivity would likely come from a bonded approach, utilising new and existing broadband and cellular networks to provide fans with the means to access the live data.
Other 5G-driven projects showcased during the match included the ‘Robot player’, which is controlled and guided using 5G. A screen on the ‘face’ of the robot projects what the robot sees, enabling the robot to be controlled pitch side to link fans with players in a one-to-one conversation.
Orange also profiled how it is using 5G to enable photos of fans taken by the Olympique de Marseille team to immediately appear on the giant screens in the stadium. The technology used is 5G 26GHz with mobile phones attached to a Sony camera, providing very low latency between when the photo is taken and it appearing on the big screens.
Similarly, an innovation called ‘Shoot a player’ enables photos of players taken by professional photographers to be automatically tagged and filtered using AI, according to the players, their clothes, branding on their clothing and so on.
The photos are then immediately available via an online app, for brands and other interests to download and use in their marketing and live updates from the match.
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