Artificial Intelligence Approaches in Sport

The role of digital technology in sport has seen increasing use. For example, video recordings from stationery cameras are now almost mainstream to enable coaches and athletes painstakingly examine performance by pausing, rewinding, and slowing advancing video data (frame by frame) to examine fine motor movements. However, subjective opinion and visual observation provides a limited insight. Contemporary approaches are seeing use of e.g., wearables and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate high resolution data with objective and speedier approaches of analysis. In this chapter we explore how wearables and AI-based computing vision are informing a range of sports to better inform performance as well as injury analysis. Adopted here is an explainable AI (XAI) approach to ensure an openness in how contemporary digital tools can be implemented and developed to avoid a black-box based approach. Accordingly, this chapter will serve to expose those with a less technical background to some pragmatic examples of how sports technology is changing within a digital age.