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New Devices Help Track Olympic Winners
Darren writes "Athletes are going faster, higher and longer and as a result the technology that measures their feats at the Olympics needs to keep up. As a result a number of new devices to help track winners, losers at the Games have been developed, including microchips on marathon runners' shoes, ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool, radar guns at the beach volleyball and cameras that take 1000 images per second."
Its always been easy to track the winners at the Olympics.
They're the ones with the medals hanging around their necks.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Putting RFID chips on your shoes is nothing new. All of the local races down here use ChampionChip timing, unless they're really small. Have done for years, too. There's a local company, Run-Far who times most of the races as well - you run over mats at the start, finish, and useful places in the middle. Works pretty well.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
but is there a device to track Olympic Weiners? I'm in Athens and I'm starving.
> ultrasensitive touch pads in the pool
I used to know a girl who had a couple of those.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No Fair! They will be changing the outcome when they measure the outcome.
I was at the pub watching the men's sabre competition and we noticed they were wearing helmets the light up in different colors, also wear clothing that detects contact and prevents the usual bloodletting a strike would make. Pretty interesting stuff.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now we just need a way to stop the judges from doing something stupid in gymnastics and we'll be set.
Something tells me that the technology used will inevitably be faster than the athletes it's used to track. Athletes are, after all, not going twice as high, twice as long or twice as fast, every two years.
...that's about how many are taken of Misty May's and Kerri Walsh's butts as they play a game.
I can only assume that most of the finishes will be recorded digitally, along with all of the information collected about speed and time and all of that.
So where will all of the information go when the games are over? Is there going to be a huge online stockpile where we can all go and watch the ultra slow motion finishes, and look up who had the fastest volleyball spike? I know I could spend hours just watching the slow motion cameras they use to record the divers and sprinters.
Anyone else interested? Can you imagine how much data they must be generating with all of these cameras and sensors?
Apparently the athletes are improved, too. In track events, a start time within 0.1 seconds of the gun going off is considered a false start. Apparently 0.1 seconds is the fastest reaction time that humans are capable of. Some athletes, though, are now able to react in under 0.1 seconds, and as a result, they are being charged with false starts.
a combination of well calibrated sensitivity and wet-road-tire-like grooves prevents the water from activating them.
it's just they're anticipating the gun, sometimes they get it right and most of the time they get it wrong: given the new rule that any false starter (after the first start) will be DQ'd I'm sure you won't see 0.1sec reaction times the second time around: to the naked eye the reaction times of the 2nd start they did the other day in the 100m semi-final seemed slower than the 1st for example.
It'd also be interesting to know how far from the athletes the gun is located and if sound travel speed can have an impact on things (how is the electronic system synchronized to the gun? via sound? some other way?)
-- the cake is a lie
That must be a typical media oversimplification, right? If a race comes down to a scary, rubbing-elbows-with-the-guy-beside-me sprint, I sure don't want the 'win' to be decided by where in its rotation my wheel is when we cross the line together...
This only applies if we start sending single particles to the Olympics instead of macroscopic athletes...
from the article: Matsport relied on some rather amazing high-tech timing and scoring technologies this year, including a FinishLynx® high-speed digital finish line and timing camera system, produced by Lynx System Developers, Inc., of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and an AMB Activ transponder timing system, produced by AMB-it, Heemstede, Netherlands
There is also a really nifty diagram about halfway through the article, showing how the AMB Activ Transponder timing system works.
Not directly Olympics-related, but since we were on the topic of new technology used to measure athletes...
I think this is another example of where general technology gets a huge boost because of the demand of an insanely rich non-human-essential industry.
There is a lot of money in the Olympics, mostly from advertisers on NBC. These new devices are developed more so to improve the TV watcher's experience; there wasn't a need for smart devices in the first Olympics, there is no need now.
Another example, medical imaging: if it weren't for the millions of you out there who are willing to shell out tons of money for games, better digital radiology technology would have never developed.
Personally, I think its great that technology can be developed and improved and debugged at the expense of entertainment industries and then be taken to other fields. No doubt the Olympics have improved the field of embedded computing as a whole.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
Unless of course they have a chip in both shoes which would totally invalidate my problems with it. Are you suggesting I didn't read the article?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
What's the matter Timothy, can't get enough of all those guys in tights without technical assistance?
Even 50 years ago, they were using exactly the same technology to figure out this stuff that they're using today: photo finishes. The fact that today the pixs are digital and available instantly and in days of yore you had to wait for them to get developed is merely an optimization.
once upon a time, events were measured down to the thousandth. in one race, 400 meter IM about 30 years ago i believe, the time separating the winner to the runner up was 0.003 seconds - about 3 millimeters. after that, it was argued that the variation in the flatness of the touch pad/pool wall would cause differences so small - hence swimming governing body decided to use the time only down to the hundredth, and consider the race tied if same to the hundredth.
i once tied another swimmer in a 1000 yard race. i thought i had beaten him because my name came up first on the scoreboard, but it turns out we had tied. i checked the computer printout and it turns out i had beaten him by 0.005 s - so my name did come up first for a reason.
"....cameras that take 1000 images per second."
Yet they are looking at giving out All-Around Male Gymnastics double gold because Judged accidentally knocked a tenth of a point from the starting score of a gymnast.
The coolest tech out there is definitely finishlynx. It takes pictures of who crosses the finish line only a pixel or two wide and stitches them together so you know exactly who crossed the line in what order and what their times were since the times are exactly proportional with the pics. In this pic of me in the men's lightweight single dash I am finishing 3rd (Alex Krupp, lane 1). The reason I appear so bloated compared to everyone else is I put on a huge fucking sprint at the finish and even though I was a full boat length of open water down on 5th place with 100 meters left I managed to finish 3rd. Not bad for not eating shit or drinking much in 2 days to make weight. Anyway because I was going so much faster than everyone else at the finish I appear in the least number of pixel wide images, thus making me appear bloated and compressed compared to all the other boats. The reason all the oars are swirly is because they change positions from when the first part of the oar crosses the line to when the whole boat is passed, thus creating a cool real time motion blur.
that article is so behind it's not funny.. here's the e-mail I sent the columnist..
t m
so 1996 was not the first time for color, but maybe the first time IN THE OLYMPICS for color. I worked for Lynx from 1997-1999 as a sales rep. I've had my camera since '97 and it has always been able to do 2000 lines/sec so your 2004 timeline is way off. However, in 2004, Lynx has just released their professional camera capable of taking up to 10000 lines/sec for things such as auto racing. Surf thier site a bit and you'll get a better grip on it.
your article on Digital photofinish timing info is slighlty incorrect. Most FAT (fully automatic timing) systems used at anything above a college meet will do 2000 lines/sec like the camera I own. Thats not to say that they aren't using only 1000 of them, just not likely. Your timeline is off as well. 1992, true as listed In 1995, Lynx System developers had color cameras as you can see from thier newsletters: http://www.finishlynx.com/lynx/newsletters/body.h
and a short synopsis to curb your curiosity: A transducer (sensitive microphone) triggers the timer, either by wire or radio-encoded wireless signal. The timer is inside the camera. The camera has an image sensor just like your digial camera except it's only 1 pixel wide. You align it on the leading edge of the finish line, not just the leading 8mm of it or whatever it said. It scans the line at whatever rate I choose. Usually, I don't go below 1000/sec. The 100m will get a 2000/sec setting for elite runners. As for blocks, Reaction times are measured differently depending on who makes the system. Lynx's system is different than Seiko's or Omega's. But the speakers on the blocks are there to minimize the advantage lane 1 has in hearing the gun before lane 9 does.
It would be good to see these in the shoes of the "50km walk" participants, to detect cheating. TV cameras repeatedly show snapshots of people with both feet in the air (the regulations of the sport are that you must have 1 in contact with the ground at all times). I predict that if this technology came through, the race times would increase by 15%
I find that the closeness of the swimming competitions--in that only machines can judge who is the second place person and the third place person, make the competition seem a bit on the irrelevant side. Am I the only person who wonders what the hell the difference is between a Gold and a Silver if there were only 1/100 difference in the competitor's performances?
You're confusing cadence (the rpm of the cranks) with the revolutions per minute of the wheel. The figure you cite are in the ballpark for cadence, yes, but not for the wheels' rotation. Assume a wheel is 70 cm tall ("700c"), which gives a circumference of about 2.2 m. Let's be cautious and assume a finish speed of 60 km/h (1000 m/min for ease of computation). Therefore our hypothetical wheel would be rotating at about 450 rpm.
Perhaps if I carried a package of condoms in my khaki pants to work...
But after carrying this package for a year, security will know that your other package isn't getting any use.
paintball