Superbowl Skycam

Those who watched Superbowl on Sunday might have noticed the wonderful Skycam in action. The change in perspective is startling for us folks who have been used to pretty ordinary cricket telecasts. Whenever we need to get closer to the player in field, we have always been used to a simple Zoom. But robotic Skycam flies down to that part of the field and shoots the player over his shoulder!

Skycam can any point in a specified 3D space as shown the illustration below. The Skycam has 3 components:

1. The guiding Software called Skypath.
2. The Hardware which holds the camera (equivalent of a tripod)
3. The wires which move the Camera in 3D Space.

The whole unit is around 3feet and can fly as fast as 30mph. Now the most obvious question. Will it bump into a player, stopping play at a critical stage or even worse, what happens when the ball collides with the cam when flying towards the goal post?

The Skypath software takes care of it – the operator programs the shape of the object to look out for – like a cone, box, cube or in case of a ball, round.

I am sure they are working on a ball-cam and a bat-cam. Imagine seeing the point of view of a ball getting released from Shoaib Aktar’s hand at 150mph, hitting Lara’s bat darting skywards for a six, flying off the stadium towards the parking lot… to your car’s windshield at 100mph!