AI Veo camera, analysis giving top Brisbane schools sporting edge

Queensland's top sporting schools are harnessing cutting-edge AI technology to embrace players’ performance on the field.

As more schools embrace ChatGPT in the classroom, the top sporting schools are harnessing cutting-edge AI technology to analyse and improve students’ performance on the field.

The Department of Education has softened its stance on ChatGPT and is looking to use it as a teaching tool, but teachers have already used it to help with lesson plans and letters to parents.

Villanova College and St Laurence’s College, who topped the AIC schools First XI soccer competition last year, are also using a Veo camera and AI analysis for their soccer players.

There are also some soccer clubs in the top Queensland league, the National Premier Leagues competition, who use the technology.

Villanova College's Will Kubler (left, in green) and Marist College Ashgrove’s Sam Vosper (right, in gold) during their First XI clash in 2019. Photo: David Clark – AAP.

The Veo camera records a 180-degree view of a match or training session and automatically uploads the footage to the Veo system.

AI technology analyses the footage to detect goals, corners and shots. It also counts the number of passes and how many found their mark, and can highlight players’ positions.

While it is largely being used for soccer and futsal in South East Queensland, it can be used for a variety of other sports, such as rugby and basketball.

The Islamic College of Brisbane, situated in Karawatha on Brisbane’s southern outskirts and home to 1600 students, uses the Veo camera in its futsal excellence program.

Futsal co-ordinator Craig Burchell said the college’s teams had won three national championships, and had several teams qualify for the state competitions this year.

“Our students are loving the visual form of feedback,” he said.

“They (Veo) have AI robots that sift through the footage to work out things like the number of shots taken, goals scored, percentage of accurate passes, and lots of analytic data.

Islamic College of Brisbane futsal coach Craig Burchell with Year 7 students Muhammad Shaheer Khan, Suhayb Abdulmajid, Kemo Kenneh, and Bassam Younes. Photo: Josh Woning.

“Lots of Brisbane soccer clubs are using this, I’ve seen a few schools also using it too.

“It’s not cheap – with the annual subscription to the Veo analysis and the cost of the camera, but it is worth the investment, certainly.

“And it goes to the very foundation of what we do here – give the kids the opportunities to improve. It is invaluable for their development.”

College chief executive Ali Kadri said the school had incorporated AI bot ChatGPT into its curriculum at the start of the year.

“It has been amazing in helping our teachers create lesson plans,” he said.

“We also expanded to use it to create first drafts of some of our policies, then we would seek legal advice on the wording and finalise it.

“ChatGPT-4 is out now and it’s very good with programming – computer code writing. Our teachers are using it to help debug IT issues, and we also use it in our programming classes to check the code our students write.”