OMEGA is using a range of cameras and sensors to track the movements of athletes and to help determine the winner in close finish races. This came to the fore on Sunday’s Olympic 100-meter race at Stade de France when both Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson and USA’s Noah Lyles seem to cross the finish line at the same time. In fact, it was clear to viewers that Thompson’s foot crossed the finish line first. But, a race is determined by whose torso crosses the finish line first, and so OMEGA’s Scan‘O’Vision ULTIMATE camera, which captures up to 40,000 digital images per second, provided the proof that it was in fact Lyles’s torso that crossed the finish line 0.005 seconds before Thompson’s. It goes without saying that without that photofinish picture and timekeeping there would be controversy surrounding who actually won the race. The picture removed all the doubts.
OMEGA’s photofinish technology also includes computer vision and machine learning that uses a combination of single or multi-camera systems that feed AI models specifically trained for each sport. For example, in swimming, cameras track swimmers and then use computer vision and AI to understand their acceleration, deceleration, number of strokes, and time in the water. It’s fascinating to see in real-time the speed of each swimmer, especially as one speeds up to catch up to competitors and reach the finish line. In tennis, computer vision is helping understand athletes’ reaction time to serves and how this correlates with the quality of their returns.
In all, OMEGA uses 350 tonnes of equipment and has cabled the different Olympic venues with 200 kilometers of cable to connect 550 timekeepers, 55 of whom are devoted just to athletics, the most for any single event.
Sources: Axios, Swatch Group
