Computer Science at CMU underpins divergent fields and endeavors in today’s world, all of which link SCS to profound advances in art, culture, nature, the sciences and beyond.
CHRIS QUIRK
YinzCam
Priya Narasimhan was born in India and grew up watching rugby and cricket. But after arriving at Carnegie Mellon University she quickly became a hockey fan. “I went to my first Penguins game,” she said, “and it felt like religion to me.”
A professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Narasimhan still has a picture of the Penguins skating on game day at the old Mellon Arena, taken from the nosebleed seats. “That’s where I would sit for the games,” she said. “If there was a tall person in front of me, I would miss the action.”
That inconvenience got Narasimhan thinking, and it sparked an idea that she turned into an app, with smashing success.
Narasimhan knew there were a number of video feeds in the arena focused on both goals, the benches, and some cameras set to follow players. Was there a way, she wondered, to access those feeds on a smartphone, so fans in the stands could get a closer look at the game from their seats? Intrigued by the idea, the Penguins franchise worked with Narasimhan and her class to provide access. Together they engineered an app that pulls the video footage from the arena and shows close-ups of the action during the game on a smartphone to anyone in the arena using its Wi-Fi network.
While testing the app for dead spots in the arena, Narasimhan said, “Fans would stop us and ask what we were doing. They wanted the app, and we’d show them how to download it. Then another fan would see the first fan looking at the app, and they wanted it too. That’s when I knew we were onto something.” YinzCam was born.
Narasimhan and her team continued to perfect the device across 40 games and throughout that season’s Stanley Cup Finals, which the Penguins won in seven games. Narasimhan wrote a paper about the app and moved on to her next research project, but the Penguins loved the new app so much that when the season ended they insisted on licensing it.
In subsequent seasons, Narasimhan expanded YinzCam and broadened its potential user base beyond sporting venues, making it a versatile app for sports clubs and leagues. Narasimhan and her team built out the app to offer customizations for pro franchises that include stats, highlights, interviews, augmented reality portals and plenty of other catnip for fans, in addition to live video during competitions. YinzCam now has nearly 200 professional clients, including 19 teams in the NHL, 24 in the NFL, 19 in the NBA and four clubs in England’s Premier League. YinzCam has racked up 150 million downloads and counting ■
