Seminar: Augmented Reality for Sports

 

Goal of the Seminar

In this practical seminar, small groups of students (4) will develop an Augmented Reality (AR) sports application. These applications will either target athletes or spectators as users and aim to solve a certain problem. Both, targeted sport, stake holder, and problem to be solved will be defined in the first weeks of the seminar within the groups with the assistance of the instructors. 

Registration for the seminar is done via https://seminars.cs.uni-saarland.de/

Learning Goals:

  • How to:
    • conduct a scientific literature review, and based on that,
    • design a conceptualization of an interactive software prototype to finally
    • propose this concept during a presentation
  • Basics of creating interactive AR applications that may use visual tracking approaches
  • Basics of presenting scientifc work during talks, poster- and demo-sessions 

 

Attention: Developer Requirements for Meta Quest 3

Each project group will receive a Meta Quest 3 for the duration of the seminar. As of now, a developer account - which you will need - needs to be verified via a credit card (however, no charges will be applied). We will investigate if this can be circumvented, but please be aware that at least one team member will need to create verified developer account. More details here: https://developers.meta.com/horizon/faqs/#developer-verification-faqs 

 

Process

Phase 1 - Basics

You will learn about:

  • The goals and details of the seminar 
  • How to perform a literature review and why
  • How to demonstrate the concept of your interactive system in a presentation
  • Some related (scientific) AR projects to get inspired

Your group's tasks will be:

  • Think of a concept and base it on a literature research
  • Prepare your concept in a presentation (see below)

Phase 2 - Hands-On

You will learn about:

  • Unity 3D, how to create AR applications, and how to interface AR hardware (we will use the Meta Quest 3)

Your group's tasks will be:

  • Developing a prototype that implements the concept of Phase 1 
  • Prepare and give a presentation about your concept and current development state (mid-term presentation)

Phase 3 - Finalization and Presentation

You will learn about:

  • How to present your work as a video, poster, and interactive demo

Your group's tasks will be:

  • Finalize your prototype
  • Preparing your prototype for an interative demo that everyone can start (and calibrate if applicable)
  • Prepare a poster and demo session to present your final system
  • Prepare a video that showcases your work

 

Deliverables

During the seminar, you will have to prepare a set of graded deliverables:

Concept Presentation Talk (15min, 15% of final grade) 

You will present your concept that you have prepared based on your idea and literature review. This talk should contain the following information:

  1. Motivation of the General Topic

    • Why is the topic of the concept important?
    • What problem is being addressed?

  2. Related Work

    • What have other people already done/discovered in this area?
    • Review of relevant literature and previous work in AR4Sports applications
    • Mentioning of at least 3 scientific papers related to the topic
      • Papers should be cited by posting title, authors, conference and year on the mentioning slide
    • Online libraries for literature search (examples):

  3. Concept

    • Description of the chosen sport, stakeholder, and problem/challenge to be addressed
    • How is your system addressing this?
    • How will people use the system?

  4. Implementation Approach

    • What would an implementation of your idea include?
    • Technical details of the implementation, including software and hardware planned to be used.
    • Milestones and planned timeline of features to be implemented

  5. Challenges

    • What aspects need to be considered to ensure the system works and provides a good user experience?
    • Potential technical and user experience challenges.
    • Solutions and adaptations planned to overcome these challenges.

  6. Conclusion

    • Brief summary of the idea.
    • Reflection on the planned overall experience and the impact of the AR application.

Grading

The talk will be graded based on the following criteria:

  • Completeness (see points above)
  • Originality of Idea
  • Reflection of Related Work
  • Clarity and Organization
  • Visual Aids
  • Engagement and Delivery
  • Q&A Handling

 

Weekly Reports (5% of final grade)

Starting with Phase 2, on every monday (end of day) a short report (5-10 sentences) explaining your progress of the last week and your plan for the upcoming week has to be submitted by the team to the CMS. Please check there for the individual deadlines. These reports are not graded, but only accepted and counted towards the grade if they are submitted on time and contain the required information.

 

Mid-Term Presentation Talk (15min, 15% of final grade) 

You will present the progress of your prorotype. This talk should contain the following information:

  1. Recap of your concept

    • Description of the chosen sport, stakeholder, and problem/challenge to be addressed
    • How is your system addressing this?
    • How will people use the system?

  2. Optional: Changes to your original concept

    • If you had to change aspects of your original concept, what did you change and why?

  3. Implementation Progress

    • What are the current capabilities of your prototype right now?
    • What is still missing?
    • Milestones and planned timeline of features to be implemented in the last phase
    • Videos and/or Screenshots required (can be rough, or drafts)

  4. Challenges

    • What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
    • What challenges are still remaining and how do you plan to tackle them?

  5. Conclusion

    • Brief re-summary of the current state and what is still left to do

Grading

The talk will be graded based on the following criteria:

  • Completeness (see points above)
  • Clarity and Organization
  • Visual Aids
  • Engagement and Delivery
  • Q&A Handling

 

Final Presentation (15% + 10% + 40% = 65% of final grade) 

The final presentation will be in the form of a demo session. Besides a demonstration (see below) of your application for everyone to try out, you will also prepare a poster (see below) describing your system that we will print out. This poster should acompany your demonstration during the demo session.

Additionally, you will have to submit a short video about your prototype.

Video (15% of final grade)

Please prepare a 5 minute video presenting your work. The video should cover at least the following points:

  • Motivation - what problem do you solve?

    • Description of the chosen sport, stakeholder, and problem/challenge to be addressed

  • Using the System

    • How do people use your system - please include screencasts of your application / videos of someone using the system

  • Implementation Details

    • If you want to highlight some implementation details, this is the time

  • Limitations & Future Work

    • Which limitations does your system have, how could they be overcome?
    • How could the system be improved/extended in the future?

You can use any tools or resources (please add citations accordingly) that you want. We have had good experiences with OBS for screen recordings, the Quest 3 video recodring function, and Davinci Resolve for editing. 

Grading of the Video 

The video will be graded based on the following points:

  • Completeness (see points above)
  • Clarity and organization
  • Visual aids
  • Presentation quality of the problem and the developed system

Poster (10% of final grade)

The poster should be prepared in DIN A1 format. It can be either in portrait or landscape format. Please adhere to the submission deadline (see below) so we can print out and hang the posters in time.  It should convey the following information:

  • Motivation - what problem do you solve?

    • Description of the chosen sport, stakeholder, and problem/challenge to be addressed

  • Using the System

    • How do people use your system - please include screenshots of your application and/or pictures of someone using the system

  • Implementation Details

    • If you want to highlight some implementation details, this is the time

  • Limitations & Future Work

    • Which limitations does your system have, how could they be overcome?
    • How could the system be improved/extended in the future?
Grading of the Poster 

The poster will be graded based on the following points:

  • Completeness (see points above)
  • Clarity and organization
  • Visual appeal
  • Presentation quality of the problem and the developed system
  • Q&A Handling

Live-Demo (40% of final grade)

The live demo allows you to showcase the system. At this point, the system should be usable without an "expert", so if there is e.g. a calibration necessary, the system should guide the user through it. Furthermore, the system should include visual aids (or other applicable methods) so that non-experts are able to use the system by themselves. During the demo session we, other students, and other interested parties from our chair will try out your system.

Grading of the Live Demo 

The live demo will be graded based on the following points:

  • Robustness (does it crash?)
  • Usability (are setup and usage intuitive?)
  • Design (use of appropriates 3D models, textures, shaders, effects, sound etc. )

 

Schedule

The seminar's in-person meetings are listed here. All the deadlines can be found in the CMS.

Date and Time Room Topic
2026-04-15 14:15–15:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Kick-Off
2026-04-29 14:15–15:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Concept Talks
2026-05-06 14:15–15:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Introduction to Unity & Quest 3
2026-06-17 14:15–15:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Mid-Term Presentations
2026-07-08 14:15–15:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Evaluation of Demo Documentation
2026-07-15 14:15–16:45 DFKI, VisRoom AR4Sports - Final Demo & Poster Presentations

 

Requirements

Since this is a practical seminar, every student should meet the following minimum requirements:

  • willingness and ability to create a Developer account for the Meta Quest
  • strong programming background
  • experience with Unity, C#, and/or AR technology is a plus (but not strictly required)

 

Progress Control

To ensure a fair and even distribution of the work within the project groups, we require the following measures:

  • All code has to be committed at the provided GitLab
    • Everybody commits their own work
    • When pair programming, note this in the commit message, e.g. "Implemented Feature X - André + Felix"
    • When experimenting and trying out things (that eventually might not be part of the final prototype), still commit such work in Git on a separate branch

 

Attendance

In-person attendance is compulsory in this seminar. If attendance is not fulfilled, no certificate can be issued for the course. Exceptions are only possible with a doctor's certificate or if there is a conflict with an examination of another course. Lectures, exercise groups or tutorials of other courses are excluded from this and cannot be used as a reason for absence.

 

Organisation

Dr. Felix Kosmalla (felix.kosmalla@dfki.de)
Dr. André Zenner (andre.zenner@dfki.de)
Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger