High-tech Analysis of Human Movement

Not a single detail goes unnoticed in JGHPI’s facility. In this case, every movement of the pit crew athletes is being monitored, every step tracked by force plates on the ground.

© JGHPI

Is the athlete performing in a way that achieves the intended goal? To find out, the Joe Gibbs Human Performance Institute (JGHPI) relies on Baumer LXT industrial cameras – an imaging solution that balances high-resolution capture, real-time performance, and efficient data handling through onboard jpeg image compression. The high-tech facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, utilizes nearly 50 cameras and an instrumented floor to track an athlete’s precise movements and how he or she transmits forces to the ground. The Baumer high-speed cameras allow for the quantification of movement, such as monitoring the location of each joint in an athlete’s body, by processing the resulting 2D video with leading-edge computer vision algorithms. Originally set up to optimize the performance of the pit crew of Nascar team Joe Gibbs Racing, analyzing pit stops remains a core interest of JGHPI. Each pit stop generates about 20 terabytes of video data every hour. JGHPI’s AI-driven physics engine & real-time sports science analytics pipeline then turns this raw data into dynamic models to better understand human movement and the mechanics behind it.

Measuring Purposeful Performance

Traditional motion capture systems focus on measuring things like an athlete’s speed and joint angles. But JGHPI goes further. Their proprietary analysis platform is designed to evaluate how well an athlete’s movement aligns with real-world objectives – like creating space on a basketball court, completing a pit stop sequence, or accelerating into a defensive position. This kind of contextual analysis demands more than tracking motion; it requires video data rich enough to uncover relationships between people, tools, timing, and the environment.

Cameras Speeding up Data Processing

JGHPI selected Baumer LXT cameras for their ability to capture precise, high-speed footage at 100 to 400 frames per second – and do it efficiently. In the lab, video is streamed from many cameras simultaneously, which requires massive bandwidth. The high-speed, high-resolution capture would typically be a huge network load, bordering on impossible to process. However, the flexibility of Baumer cameras’ onboard jpeg image compression allows JGHPI to:

• Record and transmit large volumes of data without overwhelming the network
• Store more footage for long-term trend analysis and comparison
• Provide real-time video feedback to athletes and coaches during training
• Deploy cameras quickly in new setups thanks to intuitive operation and GigE Vision compatibility.

The adjustable jpeg image compression capabilities of the Baumer cameras has allowed JGHPI to reduce the amount of data from the cameras drastically, going from 15 hours to only seconds of processing. “Baumer jpeg image compression has been key,” says JGHPI’s Executive Director and Chief Science Officer Matt Osborn.