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Mapping The Tour de France Riders From Space
Roland Piquepaille writes "It was just a matter of time before someone gets the idea of using satellite localization to map the positions of the cyclists of the Tour de France. In a first test on July 21 during the ascension to l'Alpe d'Huez, ten riders were equipped with receivers and tracked by the EGNOS European satellite positioning system, a preparatory programme for the Galileo system. The European Space Agency (ESA) reports about this first test in "The best view of the Tour is from space." It's highly possible that all riders can get receivers as soon as next year. And this data will be available on the Web, so you will know in real time the exact location of your favorite champion. Read this summary for more details and a computer-generated image showing the respective positions of Lance Armstrong and Richard Virenque, the top-ranked climber, while climbing to the top of l'Alpe d'Huez."
This story would be a whole lot better if it included a biorhythm readout of the steroid or drug content of each rider! I was listening to the CBC radio in the car again today and they had a very insightful discussion about the Belgian Christophe Brandt who withdrew after testing positive for the narcotic methadone. It seems that the Tour is being marred by this drug controversy.
However the tracking system they are planning for next year seems quite a bit better than what is currently available, like this fairly unintuitive flash gizmo on CBC.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
They are tracked with GPS receivers. EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System) is the European equivalent of WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System). These systems reduce the distortions introduced by atmospheric effects by measuring the distortions at a number of base stations with known locations and transmitting the distortion map via geostationary satellites.
On another note, Lance won again. It was actually a pretty riveting end to the Tour de France.
Sometimes events inside the peloton go unwatched by commentators who are paying more attention to the leaders who have broken away from the main group. It would be nice to be able to see the jockeying that occurs between teams and individuals.
The data feed could also be used to help keep track of riders as they go after the green (points) jersey. This is a really exciting part of the Tour de France that never really gets as much attention as it deserves.
Let's hope this data gets put to good use. Kudos to the ESA!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This would be a good use of APRS (automatic position reporting system). The basic idea is that you plug a gps into a handheld HAM radio, and the radio transmits your position at periodic intervals.
-jim
Hey, slashdot, how about moving a little quicker on the submissions now and then. This info would have been nifty about 3 days ago. Seeing as I just watched Lance roll through Paris I suppose we're now just early for next year.
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Would be nice if they used some sort of extrapolation of the original data points to make the animation more smooth. Currenlty, they just place a picture of the rider at each data point, which doesn't looke very attractive. Would be nice to see an animated picture of the pike and rider as well. But then again, this is a proof of concept for the Galileo project, and not a tool for the media.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
This is a TERRORIST ATTACK waiting to happen! They will be sorry when the SCUD MISSILES are taking out riders with CENTIMETER PRESICION!
Bikes are no more affected by drugs than Baseball, Football, Soccer, track and field, swimming, you name it, there are drugs. It's only the sports that crack down on drug use that fight with the immage problem, such as the Olympics and Tour de France.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
I wonder how heavy those things are, and how much it will cost them timewise in the aggregate. Imagine nearly killing yourself on small things that add up to a win or lose at the end, but always know you have this dead weight. Or are the cyclists happy about it because it is better for the fans? Do they weigh everyone's gps units to make sure they are the same? I can see people shaving off the edges of the silicon..
http://tinyurl.com/4u8sa
There are issues related to possible conflicts.
Man, if Lance beat riders from space, I have even more respect for him. Those guys have, like, photon torpedos and shit on their bikes!
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
When I first read the headline, I envisioned a geostat satellite taking a visual survey of the tour de france. But if you RTFA its nothing but a souped up european version of WAAS + GPS, and the trackers are not even attached to the riders bikes to boot. Kinda disappointing... but at the same time not much of a loss. Cycling isn't exactly a play by play sport. The espn highlight reels more than suffice to capture the excitement and perhaps some mayhem when someone crashes the peloton. Do you really want to see Lance climb a mountain for 2 hours.
As for drug use in the TdF, despite what many people say, the reason why drug use seems so prevalent in the TdF is because of how seriously the French race officials enforce their regulations, opposed to say major league baseball.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
On that (Alpe D'Huez) stage Armstrongs bike was 2grams less than the permitted UCI minimum weight of 6kg. Not a large amount, but they actually had to add weight to his bike.
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This sig is inoffensive.
On the flipside, every bit of rotating weight you shave off the wheels counts far more than relatively stationary weight on the frame or componentry. Those wheels Armstrong rode up Alpe d'Huez with were around 1000g for the set; compare with the Ksyrium Equipes on my road bike at 1670g. Truly use-once-and-throw-away event-specific stuff... anyone over 200lbs gets on those, they fold up like pringles.
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
If they started using the helicopter cams for the sprints. They're always filming the sprints from ground-based cameras in front of the riders with ridiculous amounts of zoom. You have no chance to see who's in the lead or who's coming up fast or falling behind. Instead you have to rely on the commentator stuttering the name of whatever rider's in the lead. Hey, it's not radio, it's TV - I want to see it.
They've got the chopper hanging around all afternoon anyway, so what's the big deal?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
If Armstrong comes back for another try next year, he'd have to worry about giving some of the spectators his exact coordinates. Today: spit, tomorrow: precision guided munitions.
Cite please?
It has been ages since a French cyclist dominated the tour like the non-French cyclists have been doing for the past editions. As far as I know, the French cycling public, like their like-minded counterparts in the rest of Europe having nothing but respect for Lance Armstrong (with the exception of some nagging doubt about him being dope-free, but that goes for every cyclist in the top-10 in the Tour).
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
... it's not about data, it's about the riders.
I don't want to see every bit of telemetry. I can't be there live, and sometimes I can't watch it on TV. (Work does tend to frown on that a bit.)
So I want to see words. I want to read a description of how the sweat is pouring off Ivan Basso as he wobbles up the last agonizing meters of Col d'Madeleine and looks over his shoulder at Virenque, a hundred meters behind. I couldn't care less whether his heart rate is 200 or his cadence is 86.5. I want to hear about Lance posing for photos and sipping champagne as he rides into Paris, not that he's doing it at 28.8 km/hr.
The folks at Velonews did a spectacular job this year describing the minute-by-minute action over every stage. I'm not going to link to it, because they'd probably have me killed if I got their server slashdotted now that it's all over, but if you care, you can find it. It's better than all the telemetry in the world.
Until I saw this story, I didn't even know that there _were_ Tour de France Riders from Space. In any case, I think it's a good thing they're being mapped.
Umm are you sure about that?
Armstrong is the leader, yes. There is no controversy about it, despite what the post you are replying to said. All teams are set up like that. Kloden came in 2nd, ahead of his teammate Ullrich (the team leader), who came in 4th. Kloden was still riding for Ullrich, even to the end. Read Armstrong's book "It's Not About the Bike"; he describes the team setup pretty well. Or look online.
THE USPS placed 1st, 6th, and 9th.. Very respectable.
True. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they have some good climbers on the team, and their job is to tow Lance in their slipstream to the top of the climbs so that he can "rest" on the way up. As such, they place pretty well too, being at the front of the pack leading out Armstrong. Obviously Armstrong is a good climber on his own (evidenced by L'Alpe d'Huez), but without a team he'd be nowhere. Cycling, far more than most people realize, is a team sport.
There's a low limit weight on the bikes. 6.8 kg I think. Lance's bike was under that, and they had to add stuff to make it heavier. They can easily add a 100g or so device, and stay at the 6.8kg mark.
It's now not so much a matter of making the bike lighter, as what part to make lighter.
They (Postal) use special lightweight clothes for the climbing stages. No joke.