Analysis of Racing Greyhound Path Following Dynamics Using a Tracking System

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has been working closely with the Australasian greyhound industry for more than 5 years to reduce greyhound race-related injuries. During this period, UTS has developed and deployed several different techniques including inertial measurement units, drones, high-frame-rate cameras, track geometric surveys, paw print analysis, track soil spring-force analysis, track maintenance data, race injury data, race computer simulation and modelling to assist in this task. During the period where the UTS recommendations have been adopted, the injury rate has dropped significantly. This has been achieved by animal welfare interventions that lower racing congestion, and lower transient forces and jerk rates the greyhounds experience during a race. This study investigated the use of a greyhound location tracing system where small and lightweight signal emitting devices were placed inside a pocket in the jackets of racing greyhounds. The system deployed an enhanced version of a player tracking system currently used to track the motion of human athletes. Greyhounds gallop at speeds of almost 20 m/s and are known to change their heading direction to exceed a yaw rate of 0.4 rad/s. The high magnitudes of velocity, acceleration and jerk posed significant technical challenges, as the greyhounds pushed the human tracking system beyond its original design limits. Clean race data gathered over a six-month period were analysed and presented for a typical 2-turn greyhound racing track. The data confirmed that on average, greyhounds ran along a path that resulted in the least energy wastage, which includes smooth non-linear paths that resemble easement curves at the transition between the straights to the semi-circular bends. This study also verified that the maximum jerk levels greyhounds experienced while racing were lower than the jerk levels that had been predicted with simulations and modelling for the track path. Furthermore, the results from this study show the possibility of such a systems deployment in data gathering in similar settings to greyhound racing such as thoroughbred and harness horse racing for understanding biomechanical kinematic performance.

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Reconfigurable fuzzy logic system for high-frame rate stereovision object tracking

10.32920/ryerson.14654598.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Oleg Samarin

Keyword(s):

Fuzzy Logic ◽

Control System ◽

Object Tracking ◽

Fuzzy Logic Control ◽

Tracking System ◽

Frame Rate ◽

Disparity Map ◽

High Frame Rate ◽

Logic Control ◽

Logic System

his study investigates the applicability of fuzzy logic control to high-frame rate stereovision object tracking. The technology developed in this work is based on utilizing a disparity map produced by the Stereovision Tracking System (STS) to identify the object of interest. The coordinates of the object are used by the fuzzy logic control system to provide rotation and focus control for object tracking. The fuzzy logic control was realized as a reconfigurable hardware module and implemented on Virtex-2 FPGA platform of the STS. The fuzzy reasoning was implemented as a reconfigurable look-up table residing in FPGA's internal memory. A set of software tools facilitating creation of loop-up table and reconfiguration of fuzzy logic control system was developed. Finally, the experimental prototype of the system was built and tested.

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Automated section for milling soil in near-trunk zones of orchard

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202016101068 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 161 ◽

pp. 01068

Author(s):

Dmitriy Khort ◽

Rostislav Filippov ◽

Igor Smirnov ◽

Alexey Kutyrev ◽

Stepan Semichev

Keyword(s):

Theoretical Analysis ◽

Quality Indicators ◽

Hydraulic System ◽

Tracking System ◽

Fruit Trees ◽

Original Design ◽

Milling Cutter ◽

Working Bodies

Machines used in gardens do not fully comply with the quality indicators of tillage, especially in the near-trunk zones of fruit trees. Theoretical analysis made it possible to establish that the preferred protective distance in the aisle of the garden should be at least 0.20 m in each direction, and in the inter-barrel space of the boles along a row of 0.38 m and to establish the optimal width of the extension section of 0.55 m. As a result of the research, an original design of the deflectable milling section of the garden milling cutter with an autonomous hydraulic system was proposed and developed, as working bodies knives with special sharpening are used. The tracking system of the remote section is equipped with a double remote probe, when exposed to which the section is retracted to the required distance to protect the trunk of a tree. The use of a deflectable milling section of a garden milling cutter allows to increase the accuracy and quality indicators of processing in the near-trunk zones of garden plantings, while the density of the soil decreases on average by 24%.

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Analysis of Non-Game Injuries in Major League Baseball

Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine ◽

10.1177/2325967119888499 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (12) ◽

pp. 232596711988849

Author(s):

Amanda Esquivel ◽

Michael T. Freehill ◽

Frank C. Curriero ◽

Kevin L. Rand ◽

Stan Conte ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Recent Literature ◽

Major League Baseball ◽

Tracking System ◽

Injury Rate ◽

Primary Diagnosis ◽

Professional Baseball ◽

Baseball Players ◽

Minor League Baseball ◽

Minor League ◽

Major League

Background: Numerous studies have investigated injuries and treatments in the baseball athlete. The majority of these studies have focused on the throwing shoulder and elbow. However, more recent literature is reporting injuries to other regions in this cohort, including the knee, head, hip, and hamstring. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of the current study was to determine the number and type of injuries in Major League Baseball (MLB) and Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players that do not occur during the actual game but are related to baseball participation. Our hypothesis was that there would be a substantial number of injuries that occurred in professional baseball players during non-game situations. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Methods: Deidentified, anonymous data were collected from the 2011 through 2016 seasons from the MLB Health and Injury Tracking System (HITS) medical record database. All injuries that were identified as a primary diagnosis and resulted in at least 1 day out of play from both MLB and MiLB were examined. Injuries were categorized as occurring during the game (“game” injuries) or not during the game. A “non-game” injury was defined as occurring at any time other than during the scheduled game from the first to last pitch. Results: There were 51,548 total injuries in MLB and MiLB players from 2011 to 2016, almost 40% of which were attributed to non–game-related injuries (n = 19,201; 37.2%). The remainder occurred during a game (n = 32,347; 62.8%). A significantly greater percentage of non-game injuries were season ending (10.8%) compared with the percentage of game-related season-ending injuries (8.4%) ( P < .0001). Pitchers had significantly more non–game-related injuries than game-related injuries ( P < .0001). Conclusion: A large number of injuries occur in professional baseball outside of actual games. MiLB players, specifically pitchers, are particularly at risk for these types of injuries. It is feasible that the overall injury rate in professional baseball players could be reduced by analyzing these injuries in more detail to develop prevention strategies.

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Accurate Infrared Tracking System for Immersive Virtual Environments

International Journal of Creative Interfaces and Computer Graphics ◽

10.4018/jcicg.2011070104 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 49-73 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Filipe Gaspar ◽

Rafael Bastos ◽

Miguel Sales

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Large Scale ◽

Tracking System ◽

3D Structure ◽

Optical Tracking ◽

Frame Rate ◽

Input Device ◽

Optical Tracking System ◽

Immersive Virtual Environments ◽

Hardware Configuration

In large-scale immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, such as a CAVE, one of the most common problems is tracking the position of the user’s head while he or she is immersed in this environment to reflect perspective changes in the synthetic stereoscopic images. In this paper, the authors describe the theoretical foundations and engineering approach adopted in the development of an infrared-optical tracking system designed for large scale immersive Virtual Environments (VE) or Augmented Reality (AR) settings. The system is capable of tracking independent retro-reflective markers arranged in a 3D structure in real time, recovering all possible 6DOF. These artefacts can be adjusted to the user’s stereo glasses to track his or her head while immersed or used as a 3D input device for rich human-computer interaction (HCI). The hardware configuration consists of 4 shutter-synchronized cameras attached with band-pass infrared filters and illuminated by infrared array-emitters. Pilot lab results have shown a latency of 40 ms when simultaneously tracking the pose of two artefacts with 4 infrared markers, achieving a frame-rate of 24.80 fps and showing a mean accuracy of 0.93mm/0.51º and a mean precision of 0.19mm/0.04º, respectively, in overall translation/rotation, fulfilling the requirements initially defined.

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A Robotic Cognitive Architecture for Slope and Dam Inspections

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s20164579 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (16) ◽

pp. 4579 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Milena F. Pinto ◽

Leonardo M. Honorio ◽

Aurélio Melo ◽

Andre L. M. Marcato

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Cognitive Architecture ◽

Electrical Power ◽

Data Gathering ◽

Path Following ◽

Sensors And Actuators ◽

Construction Enterprises ◽

Performance Quality ◽

Human Operators ◽

High Level

Big construction enterprises, such as electrical power generation dams and mining slopes, demand continuous visual inspections. The sizes of these structures and the necessary level of detail in each mission requires a conflicting set of multi-objective goals, such as performance, quality, and safety. It is challenging for human operators, or simple autonomous path-following drones, to process all this information, and thus, it is common that a mission must be repeated several times until it succeeds. This paper deals with this problem by developing a new cognitive architecture based on a collaborative environment between the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other agents focusing on optimizing the data gathering, information processing, and decision-making. The proposed architecture breaks the problem into independent units ranging from sensors and actuators up to high-level intelligence processes. It organizes the structures into data and information; each agent may request an individual behavior from the system. To deal with conflicting behaviors, a supervisory agent analyzes all requests and defines the final planning. This architecture enables real-time decision-making with intelligent social behavior among the agents. Thus, it is possible to process and make decisions about the best way to accomplish the mission. To present the methodology, slope inspection scenarios are shown.

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Erratum to: A Robust Tracking System for Low Frame Rate Video

International Journal of Computer Vision ◽

10.1007/s11263-015-0836-7 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 115 (3) ◽

pp. 305-305 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Xiaoqin Zhang ◽

Weiming Hu ◽

Nianhua Xie ◽

Hujun Bao ◽

Stephen Maybank

Keyword(s):

Tracking System ◽

Frame Rate ◽

Robust Tracking ◽

Low Frame Rate

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A Model-Based Gaze Tracking System

International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools ◽

10.1142/s0218213097000116 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 06 (02) ◽

pp. 193-209 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Rainer Stiefelhagen ◽

Jie Yang ◽

Alex Waibel

Keyword(s):

Tracking System ◽

Facial Feature ◽

Frame Rate ◽

Multimodal Interfaces ◽

Feature Points ◽

Gaze Tracking ◽

Video Teleconferencing ◽

Model Based ◽

Potential Applications ◽

Perspective Model

In this paper we present a non-intrusive model-based gaze tracking system. The system estimates the 3-D pose of a user's head by tracking as few as six facial feature points. The system locates a human face using a statistical color model and then finds and tracks the facial features, such as eyes, nostrils and lip corners. A full perspective model is employed to map these feature points onto the 3D pose. Several techniques have been developed to track the features points and recover from failure. We currently achieve a frame rate of 15+ frames per second using an HP 9000 workstation with a framegrabber and a Canon VC-C1 camera. The application of the system has been demonstrated by a gaze-driven panorama image viewer. The potential applications of the system include multimodal interfaces, virtual reality and video-teleconferencing.

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