2006: IBC Innovation Awards - Creation Category Winner
Project Title: The Piero Sports Graphics project

From left to right - Peter Brightwell and Graham Thomas (BBC Research), Mike Lumley (chairman of judges panel, IBC Awards), Andy Townsend (Red Bee Media).

This prize was awarded to BBC Research and Red Bee Media.

Piero is a system for generating virtual views of sporting events and adding 'tied-to-pitch' graphics. It started life as a project at BBC Research www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/virtual/piero, and was commercialised by Red Bee Media (formerly BBC Broadcast) to meet the requirements of BBC Sport. BBC Outside Broadcasts were the other key partner in the collaborative development, ensuring that the system fitted well into the OB environment. Piero is the only system of its kind to enable viewers to see 'play' from angles that cannot be captured by conventional cameras. The system was named after the Italian painter and pioneer of perspective, Piero della Francesca. It has been used by BBC Sport since September 2004, and has since been sold to a number of other broadcasters.

Piero won the IBC Innovation Award for Innovative Application of Technology in Content Creation www.ibc.org, as well as the Cable and Satellite Product of the Year Award for Best Outside Broadcast Technology or Service.

The work at BBC Research that led to Piero is continuing, and is currently looking at developments such as using images from multiple cameras to create full 3D models of live action (www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/iview).

Read more about Piero:
Piero webpage