Tech Wizardry in the Beijing Winter Olympics

The Beijing Winter Olympics took place on the 4th of this month. It would have escaped my notice completely, quite ironically, if some well-meaning Human Rights activist had not come into a room I was in on my Clubhouse app, and insisted on urging us to boycott the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics as protest against the alleged Uyghur genocide.

These activists are adorable. Gotta love 'em, eh? Like, do activist-led boycotts even work on something like China?

This did not make me suddenly want to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics, but it did pique my interest enough to do a search on Google and YouTube. And that led me down quite a rabbit hole, especially where the tech was concerned. Also, my wife, who is a citizen of the People's Republic of China, after noting my interest, started sending me clips of the technology used during the event.

Transport

First off, there's the self-driving cars that are ferrying people all around the area of the sporting venues. The first time I saw one of those, it struck me that it looked way better than the ones used in the movie Total Recall. That's certainly cool, but the one that really caught my attention was the high-speed rail connecting Beijing to Zhangjiakou.

An amazing 5G-fitted train.

It was also driverless. Visually, the train wasn't all that impressive, but the various little amenities inside it - due to 5G capabilities augmented by repeater towers installed all along the route so that the signal remained strong even when the train was traveling through tunnels - were mind-blowing.

Robots

The next really cool thing about the tech was robots. Robotics was used in multiple places. In the kitchens, orders were placed via a tablet, and robotic arms tossed vegetables in woks and prepared dishes such as claypot rice, burgers and fries. Completed dishes were delivered by a ceiling-mounted conveyor belt. And check out their barista robot with the super-long arms!

Also of note were the robots that helped with safe distancing. Robots warned visitors to mask up, checked temperatures and sprayed disinfectant on a frequent basis. Can you say awesome?!

Venues

I've saved the arguably coolest thing for last. Beiing needed a venue for curling. Curling being an exclusively winter sport, it would not make sense to build a venue just for that, and leave it unused for the rest of the year. So they came up with this idea for the process of converting a swimming complex to an ice rink! The video below will explain it far better than I ever could, but the tech involved, while not exclusively software tech, was nevertheless a very impressive achievement.

Next to that, however, a 360 degree experience was made possible by an orbiting camera, coupled with 5G technology that concurrently uploaded footage of the venue from all possible angles. Trackers sewn into the suits of atheletes provide feedback of their positions. The net result was that spectators not on-site viewing the event, got something like a virtual experience which was both high-quality and low-latency.

Final thoughts

The sheer amount of work involved and the ingenuity of the implementation was staggering. It also holds some implications for the future. What if all this could be implemented on a larger scale than just for the Winter Olympics? Now that's exciting.

Seeya later, sport!
T___T