As the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were successfully completed in August. 2021, we all witnessed amazing performances throughout. Japan being the pioneer in Robotics and smart city advancements exhibited a wonderful show of innovative technologies in this extravagant Olympics sports event. Computer vision is changing the way experts and coaches understand the games.

Let’s dive deep into how Computer Vision can be used in sports events

The Olympic games depended heavily on live broadcasting as audiences around the world were engaged in the competitions. Videos played a crucial role in the Olympic Games when it came to broadcasting, recording or judging and more…

Here’s how Tokyo Olympics combined camera and computer vision:

• 3D Athlete Tracking

It is a technology that is applied mainly for sprint events. One can view the statistics of the athletes’ running speed that are acquired with the 3DAT technology. Sophisticated cameras are installed around the stadium and capture the movements of sprint runners.

Computing systems are highly effective, OBS can obtain and deliver the analyzed data for generating real-time overlay visualizations. For instance, during ongoing replays, the track will be colored as the sprinter’s run that represents the speed levels and demonstrates the fast speed.

• Multi-camera Replay System

To make sure that the audiences who are at home must have a better understanding of the competition, the Olympic Broadcasting Services team (OBS) adopts a multi-camera replay system for capturing the real-time movements and situations of the sportsperson from multiple perspectives.

True View technology collaborated with INTEL and utilized football and basketball events. Tiny cameras are installed around the ceiling of the stadium for recording different volumetric data. High-performance server and computer vision recognize the height, depth and width for recognizing the volumetric data to turn it into accurate volumetric videos which are 360 degrees. These can be replayed to generate amazing freeze frames for a detailed explanation of the game.

• Hawkeye Judging System

The Hawk-eye judging system played a crucial role in this Olympics for the Taiwanese. Lin-Yang duo can win a gold medal for Taiwan in the men’s double badminton tournament just in the last round of the competition where the judges check the surveillance system for identifying if the ball was inbounds or not.

The result and the screen capture went viral in Taiwan. There were more than 10 high-speed cameras installed around the venue combining technologies of artificial intelligence, computer vision and time recording where the Hawk-eye can recognize the shape of the ball following its movement and estimate its landing point. And there must be some deviations from the actual result which is 3.6 mm according to the latest data which is accurate enough for the judgement. Hence, the Hawkeye system has boosted the games to another level.

• Free Throw robot

The Japanese obsession with robots is unstoppable and you can find robots almost everywhere in Japan that are designed with artificial intelligence technology. The Olympic games are not an exception. CUE is a free throw robot created by Toyota which is designed for free throws and it can be seen in the halftime show in the Olympic Basketball matches.

With all-new sophisticated cameras installed on a space and a set of computer vision systems inside, CUE can identify the goal on the net and then calculate the distance between itself and the goal and eventually come up with the best angle and strength to throw the ball inside the basket. Although CUE is under development, its calculation is very accurate and shots are mostly successful and three-pointers.

From the above real-life examples,

Computer Vision has successfully made sure that it is one of the cutting edge technologies which could be a great helping hand to humans in the future and in the field of sports. And it is not hard to see how we can make the best use of robots with more advanced technologies to assist with training and other events. With so many advanced technologies demonstrated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, we must agree that Japan has done a good job in building smart city advancements.

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