# AI-Driven Smart Transformation in Physical Education: Current Trends and Future Research Directions
## 3 Methods and Materials  
### Data Sources and Research Methods  
This study aims to analyze the current achievements, future development directions, and potential challenges in the integration of \"artificial intelligence and physical education\". We selected journal articles from the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI) in the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection as the data sources, reflecting a focus on rigor and credibility [21; 22]. Our search query was constructed as TS = ((\"Artificial intelligence\" OR \"Artificial neural network\" OR \"case-based reasoning\" OR \"cognitive computing\" OR \"cognitive science\" OR \"computer vision\" OR \"data mining\" OR \"data science\" OR \"deep learning\" OR \"expert system\" OR \"fuzzy linguistic modelling\" OR \"fuzzy logic\" OR \"genetic algorithm\" OR \"image recognition\" OR \"k-means\" OR \"knowledge-based system\" OR \"logic programming\" OR \"machine learning\" OR \"machine vision\" OR \"natural language processing\" OR \"neural network\" OR \"pattern recognition\" OR \"recommendation system\" OR \"recommender system\" OR \"semantic network\" OR \"speech recognition\" OR \"support vector machine\" OR \"SVM\" OR \"text mining\") AND (\"physical education\" OR \"sports education\" OR \"fitness education\" OR \"sports training\")). Although the search strategy includes various interdisciplinary keywords, this study has rigorously screened the data to ensure that all selected literature is directly related to the application of artificial intelligence in physical education. The keywords \"cognitive computing\" and \"communication codes\" have practical applications in personalized feedback and learning analytics within physical education. By incorporating these keywords, we are able to comprehensively capture the diverse application scenarios and technological needs in the intelligent transformation of physical education [17]. This search covered the period from 1 January 2003 to 1 August 2024. We chose this timeframe because, since 2003, the field of AI integration with physical education has seen a significant increase in attention. This period allows us to observe the development of technology, policy support, and emerging trends and challenges in practice. The cutoff date for the search was 1 August 2024, when we conducted the final literature search and data collection. The search strategy was designed to cover all potentially relevant literature on the research topic. However, despite the broad scope, the search may include some articles that are less relevant to the topic. The framework of Data sources and research methods is shown in Figure 1.  
We implemented a multi-round filtering process to ensure the quality of the selected literature. The initial search resulted in 652 articles. In the first round of screening, the primary author reviewed the titles, abstracts, and relevance to the research topic, eliminating approximately 381 irrelevant or off-topic articles, reducing the pool to 271 articles. In the second round, three members of the research team systematically evaluated the remaining articles, focusing on thematic alignment and relevance to the research objectives, removing 124 articles that, despite appearing relevant, did not meet the content requirements of the study [23]. In the third round, a cross-review of the remaining 147 articles was conducted, with several experts reviewing to eliminate articles with high redundancy or insufficient connection to the core topic, leading to the exclusion of 51 more articles. After multiple rounds of rigorous filtering and review, a final set of 96 eligible journal articles was selected for analysis. After constructing the dataset, we performed text preprocessing, including stemming and thematic summarization. Next, we applied the LDA topic model to identify key themes in the text and used the perplexity metric to determine the optimal number of topics in the model.