Sharp Brings Fast-Pace to Baseball

By Jessica Davis -- Electronic News, 4/15/2004

As certain as April brings Opening Day, the beginning of baseball season also brings long games punctuated by tobacco chewing, pitching changes, arguments with umpires and other delays that most people consider a part of the whole glorious experience that is baseball.

But a new venture out of Sharp Electronics is looking to change that -- for those who want it changed. Sharp Technology Ventures was formed last month as an offshoot of Sharp Labs, the research and development arm of the electronics company.

The new venture is charged with leveraging technology developed in the company's labs by licensing it to others in areas such as digital audio and video systems, wireless technology, digital imaging, IT, LCD process technologies and integrated circuit process technologies.

But the first technology Sharp Tech Ventures will license is designed to offer people an alternative way to watch baseball or other sports.

Called "Himpact Sports" the new commercial technologies came from a Sharp researcher who developed technology to summarize video content.

"If you watch a baseball game it will last three hours and sometimes more," said Jon Clemens, the lead executive at the new Sharp venture. "If you run it through our system, it automatically takes out things that aren't baseball and it ends up lasting only 45 minutes."

Algorithms created by the labs and events defined by the licensee allow the system to recognize what is baseball and what is not.

"What it leaves in is baseball -- a stolen base, a pop up, a pitch," said Clemens. "It goes through and finds them all. What you see is the windup, pitch, strike, windup, pitch, strike.

"Some people can't watch a three hour game. They are working. They want to see every play, but they don't have three hours," he said.

In today's fast paced world, this technology brings speed to even a relaxing slow-paced game like baseball.

Potential licensees include sports networks such as ESPN or Fox that could sell abbreviated versions of games. Another possible group of licensees include personal video recorder makers such as Tivo.

Such a licensee could further change the business of broadcasting.

"If you haven't defined a television commercial as baseball, it won't include the commercial in your recording of the game," said Clemens.

Sharp is also in talks with companies that provide coaches with tapes after games. Such tapes offer several views, the game clock, the real clock, and show every play, according to Clemens.  In the past, this kind of product has been put together manually, a time consuming and expensive process. The new Sharp technology offers the promise of simplifying the creation of such tapes.

The event recognition technology used in Sharp's Himpact Sports also holds potential for other more serious applications -- security, for example.

"If you define an event as someone jumping over a turnstile, this will find it," Clemens said. 

Sharp's Himpact Sports is the first technology the company is licensing, but Clemens and his group are in the process of identifying the next candidates for the program. They include new wireless technology that separates different kinds of data transmissions and sends them at different times to enhance battery life. Another is a technology that significantly sharpens scanning quality.

"It's hard to decide which ones to pick first," said Clemens. "We are now going through and trying to figure out which ones to put the time and effort into."