Challenge is next step in the NFL's Digital Athlete initiative, designed to improve the long-term health and safety of players
$100,000 in total prize money available; open through November 2, 2021
New York, August 10, 2021 – The National Football League (NFL) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) today launched a new artificial intelligence challenge to create ways for computers to automatically identify players using NFL game footage. New computer vision models created through the challenge will accelerate the NFL's work with AWS to better understand, and aim to reduce, injuries in the NFL. Prize money totaling $100,000 will be awarded to data scientists with winning models. The contest will be open through November 2, 2021.
This challenge is the next step in the NFL's work with AWS to develop the Digital Athlete, a virtual representation of an NFL player that can be used to better predict and hopefully prevent player injury. Last season, the NFL hosted its first computer vision competition, providing computer scientists NFL game data and challenging them to create ways to detect on-field helmet impacts. Nearly 7,800 submissions were received from data scientists around the world. Those solutions are now being used by the NFL and AWS in ongoing work on the Digital Athlete.
This challenge builds upon last season's competition by scoring teams based on how accurately they identify players involved in a helmet impact. The NFL will be providing data scientists with the same set of game data to build upon the current models. This competition will advance an already robust machine learning pipeline built on AWS that is working towards being among the most advanced and sophisticated injury surveillance and mitigation programs in professional sports.
"This competition is foundational in helping identify each player's risk to injury-causing events, especially when it comes to head health," said Jeff Miller, NFL Executive Vice President overseeing the league's health and safety programs. "We are excited to enlist some of the most talented data scientists from around the world to help develop these solutions and meaningfully advance player safety."
"Using AWS's broad range of technologies including machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), the NFL and AWS will generate more new insights than ever previously possible into player injuries, game rules, equipment, rehabilitation, and recovery," said Priya Ponnapalli, Senior Manager, Applied Science, Amazon ML Solutions Lab. "This contest will continue that work and the data and insights collected through this project have the potential to shape the future of football."
The Digital Athlete will ultimately help the NFL and its clubs to leverage sports science and injury biomechanics to develop individualized training and recovery regimens, conduct real-time risk analysis for injury during games, and identify and evaluate additional player safety initiatives, including around equipment, rules changes and coaching techniques.
To enter the competition, visit https://www.kaggle.com/c/nfl-health-and-safety-helmet-assignment/ for more information about rules and eligibility.
About the NFL's Player Health and Safety Initiatives
The NFL is committed to advancing progress in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of sports-related injuries. The league's approach to player health and safety is rooted in the collection and analysis of data to help guide its continuous efforts to understand and reduce injury, and protect players. Data and science are the foundation of the NFL's efforts to further enhance medical protocols, improve the way our game is taught and played, and stimulate the development of new and improved protective equipment, including helmets. For more information about the NFL's health and safety efforts, please visit www.NFL.com/PlayerHealthAndSafety.
About Amazon Web Services
For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 81 Availability Zones within 25 geographic regions, with announced plans for 21 more Availability Zones and seven more AWS Regions in Australia, India, Indonesia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
