Peripheral Labs taps into self-driving car sensors to bring sports fans right into the game

Summary

Multiple reports suggest that live sports viewing has declined for certain sports, especially among Gen Z. To solve this, leagues and broadcasters are trying to make sports more engaging for fans with different kinds of viewing experiences, stats, and analysis. One way to do this is using volumetric video generation that lets users view the play from various angles, giving an inside-the-video-game experience. The core technology uses numerous cameras to capture the footage in 3D for everyone to look at it from various viewpoints. Canada-based Peripheral Labs wants to make this technology affordable for leagues and teams to so it can reach more broadcasters and fans. Peripheral Labs was founded by Kelvin Cui and Mustafa Khan in 2024. Both have worked on driverless cars for the University of Toronto’s team, winning several trophies. Khan has worked as a researcher at Huawei, and Cui has experience working on chassis systems as a software engineer at Tesla. “Both Mustafa and I are huge sports fans. He has been a massive Arsenal fan, and I grew up watching the Vancouver Canucks since I was seven. When Mustafa showed me his research about 3D reconstruction, my brain said it would be cool to watch hockey like this [in a free-flowing, multi-angle way]. This is how we started on Peripheral Labs,” Cui said in a call with TechCrunch. VIDEO The company said the idea of volumetric generation isn’t new. But with the new AI models and advances in computer vision, its founders are confident the technology is ready for the the masses. The duo is using their experience with self-driving cars to apply concepts of robotics perception and 3D vision for the 3D reconstruction of video in sports. This system can reduce the camera requirement from over 100 to as few as 32, helping decrease cost and operational overhead, according Cui and Khan. The startup aims to keep the hardware cost as minimal as possible for teams and broadcasters and sign multi-year contracts for its platform. The sof...