System and method for player tracking

#The present invention pertains to the field of player tracking systems. More specifically, the invention relates to a system and method for tracking players that allows player location data to be used to provide game functionality.

#Player tracking systems are known in the art. These player tracking systems allow the location of players in certain sports, such as hockey, to be tracked. Although such player tracking systems have been used to acquire, process and display location data of players, such as for the benefit of observers or officials, games generally do not utilize the player tracking system functionality to enhance or modify the game. Because games have developed without the use of player tracking systems, the addition of a player tracking system to a game typically requires modification of the rules to accommodate the player tracking system.

#In accordance with the present invention, a system and method for tracking players are presented that overcome known problems with tracking players and that provide game functionality using player tracking data.

#FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system for player tracking in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 2 is a diagram of a system for providing tracking functionality in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 3 is a diagram of a system for providing player tracking functionality in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

#In the description that follows, like parts are marked throughout the specification and drawings with the same reference numerals, respectively. The drawing figures might not be to scale, and certain components can be shown in generalized or schematic form and identified by commercial designations in the interest of clarity and conciseness.

#FIG. 1 is a diagram of a system 100 for player tracking in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. System 100 allows player tracking to be incorporated into a game, such as paintball, so as to allow additional functions that are made possible by tracking to be incorporated into the game. Likewise, some of the features of system 100 can also or alternately be used where the tracking of participants is not performed.

#System 100 includes tracking controller 102, which can be implemented in hardware, software, or a suitable combination of hardware and software, and which can be one or more software systems operating on a general purpose server platform, such as one or more DELL Poweredge 2550 servers, each having dual Pentium III processors, 512 MB SDRAM, and 100 GB of hard drive storage. As used herein, a software system can include one or more objects, agents, threads, subroutines, separate software applications, two or more lines of code or other suitable software structures operating in two or more separate software applications, on two or more different processors, or other suitable software architectures. In one exemplary embodiment, a software system can include one or more lines of code or other suitable software structures operating in a general purpose software application, such as an operating system, and one or more lines of code or other suitable software structures operating in a specific purpose software application. In another exemplary embodiment, a software system can be one or more lines of hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML), a web browser plug-in, or other suitable code that operates in conjunction with a web browser application.