Software aids future tennis stars

Some opponents may seem unbeatable

As Britons bemoan another year without a Wimbledon hero, there could be some hope in a computer model being worked on at Kingston University in London.

It could give tennis players and other athletes the competitive edge they need to beat their opponents.

It will create a computer-generated competitor which rival players can pit themselves against.

The system will analyse video footage of champions and allow other players to explore tactics to beat them.

Video footage

Instead of poring over video clips of current Wimbledon champion Roger Federer's game, new hopefuls keen to take his crown can let the computer analyse his play.

The system is part of a three-year research initiative, with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council providing more than £80,000 of funding

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It will feed conventional video footage into the system. Purpose-built visual tracking software will identify the players and their positions.

It will track them throughout the game they are playing and the information will be fed into predictive models trained to recognise known tactics and strategies.

The computer models will aim to recognise the difference between attack and defence, allowing the rival player to come up with strategies to counter them.

The research will focus initially on tennis but will move on to look at more complex sports such as football and basketball.

"As well as helping specialised sports training, the technology we are developing could have benefits in fields such as realistic computer gaming, virtual reality and surveillance," said Dr Ahmed Shihab of the School of Computing and Information Systems at Kingston University.