After the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a passage was widely circulated on social media: "The opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games and the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics are half a year apart, and the progress of human science and technology in this half year is really great." ”
Cover source | Beijing Daily client
On the evening of February 4, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics came to the moment when the main torch was lit, and the two athletes jointly lit the last torch of the Winter Olympics. But this time, there was no huge torch platform or huge fireworks burning, but a tiny flame rose in the center of the huge "snowflake" composed of more than 90 national names.
This disruptive change is closely related to the current wave of low carbon and environmental protection. According to China Youth Daily, when the main creative team of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics reviewed the 2008 data, it was found that the torch lit at that time consumed nearly 5,000 cubic meters of gas an hour, and the general director Zhang Yimou and the team began to think: "Can the flame be more environmentally friendly?" ”
This brings us to the "micro-fire" we see today, which is fueled by clean hydrogen energy. In the singing of "Snowflakes" sung by more than 600 children, the narration of the host on the spot sounded: "Although the fire is small, it is eternal and long, and it is endless." ”
The energy-saving and low-carbon concept behind the "micro-fire" is only the beginning of the "Winter Olympics of Science and Technology".
On October 27, 2021, Zhang Jiandong, executive vice chairman of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, said that the carbon emissions of the Beijing 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be neutralized.
The facilities of the Winter Olympic venues in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou are all powered by green electricity, from heating to snowmaking, all of which comes from solar, wind, hydropower produced in rural areas about one or two hundred kilometers away, which are converted and stored in power plants and then transported to Olympic venues.
Fourteen years ago, the flame of the Beijing Olympics ignited the hearts of Chinese people around the world, and the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube used the aesthetics of science and technology to make the world remember China, compared with the slogan of the 2008 "Science and Technology Olympics", the Winter Olympics fourteen years later are more relaxed and determined.
From "Water" to "Ice"
In 2008, the Water Cube of the Beijing Olympic Venue was designed for the construction of water projects, using "water" as a decorative element and the outdoor air confluence technology used internally, making the Water Cube the fastest swimming pool in the world.
Ten years later, in September 2018, IOC Vice President Samaranch Jr. came to the Water Cube, and the National Aquatics Center demonstrated the process of transforming the "Water Cube" into the "Ice Cube" in animated form. Samaranch Jr. looked at it and exclaimed, "Beijing is hosting the Olympic Games in a smart way. ”
From the 2008 "Science and Technology Olympics" to the 2022 "Science and Technology Winter Olympics", the charm of cutting-edge technology is emerging in the arena.
On the evening of February 2, 2022, the Beijing Winter Olympic Curling Competition was held first, in the match with the Swiss combination, the Chinese curling mixed doubles player Ling Zhi / Fan Suyuan steadily attacked, in the key last shot of the two team members, Ling Zhi "killed two eagles with one stone", Fan Suyuan hit hard and scored another point, and the Chinese team won the first stop.
On February 2, the first round of the curling mixed doubles round robin tournament was | source Xinhua News Agency
In a curling game, seemingly simple friction and hitting, but may affect the results of each pot, curling sports also have extremely high requirements on the field, curling field ice surface is special, is with "water bead point" ice surface, need to freeze the bottom ice, spray white paint, and then measure, mark, water, and finally correct the ice surface, so that curling runs faster.
What many people do not expect is that the curling venue of the Beijing Winter Olympics was selected in 2008 to provide the "world's fastest swimming pool" water cube, from swimming to curling, from "water cube" to "ice cube", behind the change of sports, it is a big project.
Back in 2015, the Beijing Winter Olympics had just been successfully bid, and Yang Qiyong, general manager of Water Cube, pulled designer Zheng Fang to discuss how to transform "Water Cube" into a Winter Olympic venue. After a series of comparisons, the two finally introduced the "Water Cube" to the World Curling Federation's plan to change the "Water Cube" into an "Ice Cube": using a detachable ice making system to conduct water ice conversion experiments and tests.
The World Curling Federation supports this option, but gives the condition that if the experiment is unsuccessful, the poured concrete scheme is taken immediately.
This means that once the water ice conversion experiment fails, the water cube swimming pool that took four years to build will be directly poured with concrete and converted into an ice rink.
Yang Qiyong worried, "I don't think so, this is the fastest swimming pool in the world, really want to pour concrete (concrete), I resigned on the spot." Zheng Fang, a fellow worker, comforted him that the national building industrialization system has developed for so long, and the water ice conversion of the prefabricated assembly site will certainly achieve the same performance as the cast-in-place concrete site.
From the impossible to the possible, it often starts with bold and relentless attempts.
In order to solve the problem, Yang Qiyong and Zheng Fang found experts and professors from Harbin Institute of Technology and tsinghua University's School of Architecture to study the mechanical structure and environmental refrigeration, and overcome the difficulties of making the ice rink strong and stable and successfully cooled.
After nearly 60 days of collaboration from tsinghua university, Tongji university, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University and other four universities and scientific research teams such as China Construction First Bureau and SenseTime, at the end of 2019, a set of winter and summer scene intelligent conversion systems including key technologies such as convertible venues, adjustable environments, intelligent scene control and enhanced viewing experience were successfully developed independently; in the middle of the competition hall, a convertible structure and an detachable ice making system were also installed to form a curling field with multiple standard tracks. The "water-ice transition" went from imagination to reality.
The National Aquatics Center, which transformed into the "Ice Cube", | the official source of the image
The power of more precision
"Strength comes from fairness". Looking back at the history of the Olympic Games, we will find that for more than a hundred years, people have not given up the pursuit of precision and fairness in sports competition. At this year's Winter Olympics, technology also provided a more accurate plan for sports competition.
In the Winter Olympic test matches, AI referees were used to the greatest extent. In skilled sports such as freestyle skiing and figure skating, the AI scoring system captures and records sports movements and scores according to basic criteria.
AI referees based on digital and 3D technology can overcome complex factors such as height and light, capture the subtle movements of athletes, play back and decompose movements, and provide customized solutions for athletes before the game.
On January 21, 2022, the figure skating AI auxiliary scoring system 1.0 product was released, jointly initiated by the China Figure Skating Association and the Zhongguancun Digital Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, and the construction of the figure skating AI auxiliary scoring system 2.0 was launched at the same time, and the fourth paradigm of AI head enterprises will provide comprehensive support for artificial intelligence algorithms and platforms.
At present, this auxiliary system is mainly used in the scoring and detection of pre-competition training, using computer vision technology algorithms and deep learning to track the overall movement trajectory of athletes in real time to achieve stability visualization of competition judging.
For the technical team, the research and development of "AI referee" is not a simple exploration.
Jia Hao, secretary general of the Zhongguancun Digital Intelligence Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, told 36Kr that when the demand for figure skating self-developed AI auxiliary system was proposed, although the workers of the scientific research team were extremely enthusiastic and willing to try, figure skating is one of the most complex competition rules and one of the most difficult sports with the highest scoring, and the application of mainland artificial intelligence in the field of figure skating has been basically blank, and the team members are not sure that this project can be successfully landed.
In order to promote the project, after the Zhongguancun technical team figured out the international challenge rules of figure skating, it cooperated with the relevant university teams to mark and memorize nearly 100 videos and thousands of action samples frame by frame, so that the AI system accurately identified and judged the action by capturing eight points such as the athlete's shoulder and knee ankle.
Within two months, the figure skating self-developed AI assistance system version 1.0 was launched, which can judge the movements of athletes through flat video and capture the interaction between people and people; in version 2.0, this auxiliary system will be able to distinguish the overlapping scenes of athletes through portrait capture, and present and score in 3D.
Figure skater Yu Shengyu will also participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics| Source Xinhua News Agency
Also from a more accurate motion tracking perspective, Intel has applied 3DAT technology (three-dimensional athlete tracking technology) from the laboratory to the field.
At the Tokyo Olympics, Intel used this technology to capture the real-time position and speed of athletes, and played them back through visual video to enhance the live broadcast of the event.
In the 2022 Winter Olympics, this technology landed in the professional training of the two national teams of cross-country skiing and speed skating. 3DAT technology uses computer vision and artificial intelligence technology to capture the three-dimensional position of the athlete's key bone points and key nodes in the video, form a three-dimensional human posture, output the biomechanical model, accurately output the data, and analyze the sports performance by the biomechanics experts, coaches and athletes themselves.
3DAT technology | source Intel official
The process of 3DAT technology from research and development to landing is more like "crossing the river by feeling the stones".
Zhao Hong, general manager of Intel Beijing Olympic Project Office, told 36Kr that the original intention of the team was to prepare for the professional training of professional athletes, and in the process of research and development, the team found that in addition to the accuracy and real-time of 3DAT, 3DAT can also be applied to large scenes, large groups of position recognition and even artistic creation.
At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, ordinary people from all over the world walked on the stage, and the venue formed a long river, on which hundreds of images of Chinese and foreign people's lives were displayed.
This work was named "Tribute to the People", of which Intel based on 3DAT technology, joint third-party professional team customized development of "performance real-time special effects system based on artificial intelligence technology", with AI algorithms, developed a number of human detection AI models, can stably and accurately identify hundreds of actors in the field, and finally use multi-camera calibration results to output their real location information in real time, only 4 cameras are used to cover the whole field and complete information collection.
In 2021, the epidemic situation is repeated, in addition to technical research, Intel's scientific research team also needs to overcome international collaboration problems. Members can't meet offline, and cloud collaboration has become the main way to communicate.
"Telecommuting is completely possible." Zhao Hong said that some of Intel's team members have entered the Olympic closed loop, at present, although everyone is in Beijing, but the project progress is still remote, technical workers through the cloud to read related technology sharing documents and online meetings, to complete although not contact, but intimate cooperation.
Times are always giving rise to technological innovation. If you set the time to 1960, you will find that at the Summer Olympics in Rome that year, the timing of sports events was still judged by the naked eye, and the controversy in the men's 100-meter freestyle was already the first signal that technology was about to empower competitive sports.
At that time, the first and second swimmers reached the finish line almost at the same time, the track splash blocked the line of sight, it was difficult for the naked eye to directly judge the order, and the referee team also disagreed in deciding the championship. In the end, the gold medal in the project went to Australian athlete John DeWitt and American athlete Lance Larson came in second, arguing that inaccurate timing with the naked eye could lead to less than the fairest outcome.
It was also the last Olympics to use gross-eye scoring.
In the time that followed, technologies including trackers, light-sensing photography, and quantum timing continued to emerge and were used in sports events... Today, AI refereeing and computer vision tracking have formed an important part of sports events, the empowerment of technology is still innovating, and more power about "precision" is coming.
Viewing angle and speed
In 1896, the first torch of Athens lit the beginning of the modern Olympic Games, and the athletes from all over the world and nearly 80,000 spectators on the scene witnessed the world's first Olympic Games.
In the marathon, Greek athlete Luis was the first to run to the finish line and won the first gold medal belonging to Greece. However, due to limited technology at the time, this exciting news was not published in newspapers and periodicals in other countries across the ocean until half a month later.
Viewers who read deferred sports coverage in newspapers a century and a half ago certainly wouldn't have imagined that in the 125th year of the modern Olympics, people could already watch the games in real time with cinematic effects and in 4K/8K ultra-high-definition formats.
According to the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing Winter Olympics will broadcast more than 6,000 hours of content to the world through Alibaba Cloud, which is also the first time that the Olympic Games will be broadcast in 4K ultra-high-definition format, and some important events will also be broadcast in 8K format.
At the same time, this broadcast cloud technology also provides a high-free viewing effect similar to "bullet time", with the help of large-scale, high concurrency, low latency characteristics, dozens of high-definition screens are transmitted in real time, and then millisecond-level synthesis and modeling by intelligent algorithms, and the ultra-slow motion, panoramic viewing of the movie special effects screen, into the Winter Olympics broadcast.
Richer perspectives and faster speeds are going global through the cloud.
The broadcast of the Beijing Winter Olympics is also another major technological progress since the 1964 Olympic Games began satellite television broadcasting: the Olympic broadcast will no longer rely solely on satellite transmission, but will broadcast the cloud through the Olympic Operation, reaching billions of viewers around the world.
This is the fourth year that Alibaba Cloud has been preparing for the cloud broadcast platform. In 2018, Olympic Broadcasting Services cooperated with Alibaba Cloud to develop the Olympic Broadcast Cloud OBS Cloud, which was put into use for the first time at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, while the broadcast cloud application of the Beijing Winter Olympics means the beginning of the full cloud of technology, and the live broadcast of HDTV and online channels will be broadcast on the cloud at the same time.
For Zhang Xiaorui, an engineer of alibaba cloud winter olympics projects, the most difficult thing in the entire project landing process is not the technical overcoming, but the team communication problem derived by technology.
In the Winter Olympics, the team's partners come from various countries, so how to communicate across the ocean against the time difference is a key issue that needs to be overcome.
After a plan is made, the afternoon and foreign teams meet to discuss, the next morning and the domestic team to synchronize, in the high-paced operation of the project time, Zhang Xiaorui and other colleagues need to constantly "switch", switch language, switch ideas, switch expression logic... It's much more complicated than keeping your state online at all times compared to the technology itself.
An engineer who has supported the Tokyo Olympics and the Beijing Winter Olympics in succession is jokingly called by Zhang Xiaorui and his colleagues as an engineer who "chases the morning and evening line". After the Tokyo Olympics, he needed to return to Europe to work after the end of quarantine, and at the end of 2021, he returned home from Frankfurt because he wanted to support the Beijing Winter Olympics.
At that time, the epidemic in Europe was severe, flights were disrupted, and the return trip became a problem. For him, there was and only one choice: he had to fly home directly from Frankfurt. The epidemic is serious, there is only one flight back home every day, the ticket is difficult to grab, Zhang Xiaorui left a message in the morning to ask if he grabbed the ticket, and there will always be a voice on the nail in the afternoon: "I haven't grabbed it yet." ”
When the engineer who chased the morning and dusk line tossed and turned several times and finally grabbed a ticket to return home, the partners in the team felt more cordial than ever, Zhang Xiaorui recalled to 36Kr, although the usual work is remote communication, there are not many meetings, but for one thing to do the same effort, "it feels like an old friend returning from Europe, there is a feeling of family." ”
Alibaba Cloud engineers do technical debugging at the Winter Olympics
Every time there is a new progress and launch of the project, Zhang Xiaorui and other members of the team will take a group photo, because of the epidemic, the members of the team may be transnational communication or work from home, video conference, all the Winter Olympic workers will turn on the camera, take a cloud photo, "the photo will be saved," Zhang Xiaorui believes that this is their most worthy of recording the wonderful moment.
Alibaba Cloud's "Olympic Games on the Cloud" broadcast technology is also trying to benefit more countries around the world.
According to reports, Alibaba Cloud has added an exclusive cloud network channel for broadcast television stations in Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and other places to ensure that 4K/8K content can achieve long-distance high-quality transmission and reduce the latency by 30%, and countries can communicate and propose further optimization solutions to upgrade regional signals in the local area, bringing higher-definition synchronization screens.
In 2008, Zhang Xiaorui came to Beijing to attend university, and when the school started, the Olympic games had ended, the school organized them to participate in the Paralympic Games viewing activities, and Zhang Xiaorui, who was still a college student, hid a seed in his heart: "Many seniors in the university have participated in the volunteer activities of the Olympic Games, and I wonder if I have the opportunity to volunteer once." ”
Fourteen years later, what Zhang Xiaorui did not expect was that after so many years of graduation and work, he had once again contributed to China's own Olympic Games in the way of participants.
Before the Winter Olympics, after completing the last round of global network testing of the broadcast cloud, Zhang Xiaorui has been thinking about what kind of circle of friends he wants to send at the opening ceremony, "I am still very proud." ”
The Winter Olympics have arrived. In fact, whether it is communication or management, medical treatment or preparation, technology-enabled services ultimately point to the needs of Winter Olympic workers, Winter Olympic athletes, and point to the needs of humanization - because the logic of technology is ultimately the logic of people.
It is conceivable that each future Olympic Games will continue to enrich the application of more technologies, from human eye observation to eagle eye positioning to AI refereeing; from postponed transmission to real-time broadcasting, to broadcasting to the cloud; from text records to live television broadcasts, to VR viewing... Competitive sports are still being empowered by technology.
For China, sports is just one of the directions of rising technological empowerment. In the near future, new intelligent stories will be written, and the dawn of technological innovation will usher in a sequel.
Author/Zhang Jingyi
Editor/Su Jianxun
Source/36 Krypton