Patent Document ID: 20090046152
Application ID: 12287339
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A sports tracking system for automatically and uniquely identifying and tracking one or more participants, including players and game officials, and one or more objects, including participant equipment and game objects such as a ball or puck, as they move about within the entire performance area, throughout the entire time duration of a sporting event, comprising: at least one uniquely encoded marker adhered onto an upper surface of each participant and object to be identified; a first set of multiple stationary overhead cameras, not capable of pan, tilt or zoom movements, sufficient to form a contiguous field-of-view of said entire performance area, for generating a first video stream of images continuously throughout said entire time duration, and a first algorithm operated on a computer system exclusively and solely responsive to said first stream of video images for continuously and simultaneously analyzing the images from all cameras in said first set of multiple stationary cameras in order to detect the presence of each participant and object within each and every camera's view, to recognize said encoded markers adhered onto each participant and object thereby determining each participant's and object's unique identity, to determine for each detected participant and object it's relative two-dimensional centroid coordinates within that view, and to use this determined information from all said first set cameras for updating a real-time tracking database of at least the ongoing two-dimensional centroid location of each participants and object matched with their identities, all relative to said entire performance area.