| Abstract: |
We recover the trajectory of a fateful field goal attempt in the bowl game between Brigham Young University (BYU) and the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) in December 2007. The primary task that enables the analysis is the recovery of the locations of the TV cameras from the information contained within the frames. In this project, we develop and implement a method for determining the camera position in several frames. Using screen shots from two cameras showing the same event, we deduce the path of the football before it was tipped by a BYU player. Our analysis shows clearly that the ball would have resulted in a field goal if the BYU player had not removed a significant amount of momentum from the football. We calibrate the camera using points on the football field, which are coplanar, a difficult condition notorious for resulting in a singular matrix in traditional Direct Linear Transformations (DLT). We develop an alternative method for retrieving the camera location. We find good agreement between our method and a recently developed 2D analogue of DLT that does not suffer from the singular matrix problem. |