Project - RePlay -- Digitally capturing unique skills in European traditional sports and games

Overview

RePlay is an FP7 collaborative research project that aimed to preserve, promote, and revitalise Europe’s traditional sports and games (TSG) by treating them as an essential form of intangible cultural heritage. The project focused on Gaelic and Basque sports as representative cases, recognising their deep cultural roots, strong community engagement, and shared technical characteristics that allow results to be extended to other traditional and minority sports (download project flyer).

The core objective of RePlay was to design and implement a reusable, low-cost technology platform for digitising, analysing, and preserving traditional sports techniques and styles of play. This included studying the biomechanics and dynamics of sport movements, defining capture methodologies that balance accuracy and affordability, and enabling the digitisation of both elite “national heroes” and amateur “local heroes” using a combination of professional-grade and consumer-level motion capture technologies.

Technically, RePlay developed a full pipeline covering motion capture, multimodal data fusion, segmentation, annotation, activity recognition, and 3D rendering. The platform supports indoor and outdoor capture scenarios, integrates data from sensors, cameras, wearables, and legacy video footage, and provides interactive visualisation and comparison tools that allow users to analyse movements, learn techniques, and emulate expert athletes.

Beyond technology, RePlay placed strong emphasis on evaluation, dissemination, and sustainability. Field trials with sports organisations assessed usability, learning impact, and engagement, while open or hybrid licensing models were explored to ensure long-term reuse. By combining cultural heritage preservation with innovation in sports technology, RePlay created new opportunities for education, coaching, community engagement, and future commercial exploitation across the wider creative and cultural sectors

IN2 played a key role in the RePlay project by leading the Interact & Preserve scenario, which focused on transforming captured sports data into accessible, interactive digital experiences. Building on its expertise in multimedia platforms and content management, IN2 designed and implemented solutions for organising, indexing, and presenting motion capture data, video, and related digital assets in ways that support learning, exploration, and long-term preservation. Through this work, IN2 ensured that traditional sports content could be interactively accessed and reused by coaches, researchers, and the wider public, directly contributing to the preservation of traditional sports as living intangible cultural heritage.

The RePlay Storyspace was an interactive, web-based showcase created by IN2 for the RePlay project in collaboration with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). It presented RePlay outcomes in a narrative, easy-to-explore format, enabling audiences to discover and engage with digitised traditional sports content—bringing together captured performances, rich media, and contextual storytelling to support awareness, learning, and preservation of Gaelic sports.

Alongside IN2, the following organisations formed the consortium:

• Vicomtech, Spain (Coordinator)
• Dublin City University, Ireland
• University de Geneve, Switzerland
• Gaelic Athletic Association, Ireland
• Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - CERTH, Greece
• Basque Government, Spain
• Vicon Motion Systems Ltd, United Kingdom