Eye Tracking Cristiano Ronaldo…

Recently we were asked by a TV production company to discuss an opportunity about eye tracking a footballer, I was pretty shocked when the opportunity turned out to be eye tracking the world’s most expensive footballer in Madrid – Cristiano Ronaldo.

For an upcoming TV show called “Tested To The Limit” commissioned by one of his sponsors, Castrol, Ronaldo went through a number of tests to find out just why he is so good, and better than other players on the pitch! He undertook sprint challenges, took free kicks, demonstrated his jumping capabilities and of course we eye tracked him as well! The eye tracking part of the day took place when Andy Ansah (of Tekkers fame) and Ronaldo went head to head on the pitch and we eye tracked both of them as Ronaldo showed off his moves.

Just after filming finished Ronaldo (or at least his PR people!) tweeted this image of Cristiano wearing the Dikablis wireless eye tracker – I was sworn to secrecy so couldn’t tweet, blog or text! Although my claim to fame is that is my hand you can see in the corner of the image!

The Dikablis was ideal for the type of testing as we were able to have both of the players running freely, while we watched live their eye movements on the two laptops at the control desk to make instant observations. As the Dikablis system allows for the field camera lens to be changed (giving us a different field of view) and adjusted (so we could focus more on the lower half of the field of vision) we were able to capture some incredible data! I would love to tell you more but my lips are sealed until after the show goes out…. then look out for more of the story behind my two days locked inside a hangar!

Sky Sports 2HD are running the program exclusively on Thursday 8th September at 9pm, and there was a quick preview (blink and you may miss me!) on Sky Sports recently which you can watch back here : http://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,20450_7153767,00.html