Multi-camera sports players 3D localization with identification reasoning

Multi-camera sports players 3D localization is always a challenging task due to heavy occlusions in crowded sports scenes. Traditional methods can only provide players' locations without identifying information. Existing methods of localization may cause ambiguous detection and unsatisfactory precision and recall, especially when heavy occlusions occur. To solve this problem, we propose a generic localization method by providing distinguishable results that have the probabilities of locations being occupied by players with unique ID labels. We design the algorithms with a multi-dimensional Bayesian model to create a Probabilistic and Identified Occupancy Map (PIOM). By using this model, we jointly apply deep learning-based object segmentation and identification to obtain sports players' probable positions and their likely identification labels. This approach not only provides players 3D locations but also gives their ID information that is distinguishable from others. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms the previous localization approaches with reliable and distinguishable outcomes.