The applicability of sensor-based human activity recognition in sports has been repeatedly shown for laboratory settings. However, the transferability to real-world scenarios cannot be granted due to limitations on data and evaluation methods. On the example of football shot and pass detection against a null class we explore the influence of those factors for real-world event classification in field sports. For this purpose we compare the performance of an established Support Vector Machine (SVM) for laboratory settings from literature to the performance in three evaluation scenarios gradually evolving from laboratory settings to real-world scenarios. In addition, three different types of neural networks, namely a convolutional neural net (CNN), a long short term memory net (LSTM) and a convolutional LSTM (convLSTM) are compared. Results indicate that the SVM is not able to reliably solve the investigated three-class problem. In contrast, all deep learning models reach high classification scores showing the general feasibility of event detection in real-world sports scenarios using deep learning. The maximum performance with a weighted f1-score of 0.93 was reported by the CNN. The study provides valuable insights for sports assessment under practically relevant conditions. In particular, it shows that (1) the discriminative power of established features needs to be reevaluated when real-world conditions are assessed, (2) the selection of an appropriate dataset and evaluation method are both required to evaluate real-world applicability and (3) deep learning-based methods yield promising results for real-world HAR in sports despite high variations in the execution of activities.

In human activity recognition (HAR), activities are automatically recognized and classified from a continuous stream of input sensor data. Although the scientific community has developed multiple approaches for various sports in recent years, marginal sports are rarely considered. These approaches cannot directly be applied to marginal sports, where available data are sparse and costly to acquire. Thus, we recorded and annotated inertial measurement unit (IMU) data containing different types of Ultimate Frisbee throws to investigate whether Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and transfer learning can solve this. The relevant actions were automatically detected and were classified using a CNN. The proposed pipeline reaches an accuracy of 66.6%, distinguishing between nine different fine-grained classes. For the classification of the three basic throwing techniques, we achieve an accuracy of 89.9%. Furthermore, the results were compared to a transfer learning-based approach using a beach volleyball dataset as the source. Even if transfer learning could not improve the classification accuracy, the training time was significantly reduced. Finally, the effect of transfer learning on a reduced dataset, i.e., without data augmentations, is analyzed. While having the same number of training subjects, using the pre-trained weights improves the generalization capabilities of the network, i.e., increasing the accuracy and F1 score. This shows that transfer learning can be beneficial, especially when dealing with small datasets, as in marginal sports, and therefore, can improve the tracking of marginal sports.

Motivation, a complex construct that influences behavior, plays a critical role in an athlete’s success and has been extensively researched in sports sciences. However, motivation is still primarily assessed through self-reportmotivational questionnaires, resulting in a lack of objective, continuous measurements during athletic performance. Biosignals, increasingly used to assess psychological processes, have gained relevance due to their integration into wearable sensors, allowing non-stationary and unobtrusive data collection. Therefore, we assessed performance data, cardiovascular signals, andeye-tracking metrics to investigate the psychological and physiological processes under two different conditions designed to induce different motivational states via gamification. In this study, gamification elements, aligned with self-determination theory, were used to influence soccer players’ motivation in an immersive space, with N = 42 participants completing a passing drill in both Gamified and Non-Gamified scenarios. Features were extracted from session recordings and wearable sensors to assess whether performance or biosignals differed between conditions using a combination of machine learning and conventional statistical analysis. While self-report questionnaires and performancemetrics revealed no significant differences, the machine learning classifiers were able to distinguish between scenarios based on eye-tracking-related features. The best-performing model, a k-nearest neighbor classifier, reached a macro F1-score of 82.75 %. We identified by feature importance methods that blink behavior and pupil dynamics, indicative of visual attention, were the main contributors. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the value of integrating multimodal data and advanced evaluation methods to uncover implicit processes in applied sports contexts involving complex and heterogeneous data.

Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE), an optical imaging technique allowing non-invasive examination of the mucosa on a (sub)cellular level, has proven to be a valuable diagnostic tool in gastroenterology and shows promising results in various anatomical regions including the oral cavity. Recently, the feasibility of automatic carcinoma detection for CLE images of sufficient quality was shown. However, in real world data sets a high amount of CLE images is corrupted by artifacts. Amongst the most prevalent artifact types are motion-induced image deteriorations. In the scope of this work, algorithmic approaches for the automatic detection of motion artifact-tainted image regions were developed. Hence, this work provides an important step towards clinical applicability of automatic carcinoma detection. Both, conventional machine learning and novel, deep learning-based approaches were assessed. The deep learning-based approach outperforms the conventional approaches, attaining an AUC of 0.90.