Sochi Olympics 2014: 10 Technologies In Spotlight
From innovations for athletes to unprecedented surveillance tools for authorities, look at the technologies that will shape the Sochi Olympics.
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The 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled to begin Feb. 7 in Sochi, Russia, will test both athletes and technology. For the competitors, the nature of the competition remains much as it always has been: an extreme physical and mental challenge. But the athletes' tools will be different, thanks to ongoing research and new approaches to the various winter sports at the games.
Competitors will be looking to their equipment for a performance edge. Uniforms and other gear have been designed and engineered to minimize friction and aerodynamic drag. And efforts to keep athletes healthy and to repair their injuries are pushing the boundaries of medical technology.
For Olympic officials, their Russian hosts, security personnel, representatives of media organizations, and individuals attending the games, technology will also shape the event.
Sochi 2014 will be the surveillance Olympics. Attendees "will face some of the most invasive and systematic spying and surveillance in the history of the Games," reported The Guardian last fall, noting that Russia's FSB security service plans to monitor all communications in and around Sochi. But given what's become known about the reach of US intelligence agencies, the FSB's surveillance plan may evoke a sense of déjà vu.
There will be drones, facial recognition systems, patrol boats equipped to warn of underwater attackers, and extensive network monitoring. In recent days, US and Russian officials have been discussing whether the US is willing to assist with security by providing technology to jam signals that might be used to detonate remote bombs.
Russia's security concerns are hardly unique for an Olympic event -- some 13,500 British troops were deployed to protect the London 2012 games -- nor are they without reason: As the State Department notes in its warning to Sochi travelers, there have been recent terror incidents in the Russian city of Volgograd and a regional terrorist group, Caucasus Emirates, withdrew prior directions to not attack the Winter Olympics.
However, the watchful eye of the authorities takes on a more sinister aspect in light of Russia's recent law banning "propaganda" that promotes non-traditional relationships and its suppression of investigative reporting.
The games themselves depend on technology, not just for timing, scorekeeping, and communication, but to assure the presence of adequate amounts of snow: The ski runs around Sochi will be targeted by about 400 snowmaking cannons and swaths of snow will preserved beneath thermal insulation blankets.
Let the games begin and let the technology do more good than harm.
Image source: Olympic.org
Thomas Claburn is editor-at-large for InformationWeek. He has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television. He's the author of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and his mobile game Blocfall Free is available for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire.
After arriving at the Sochi airport, prepare to confront yourself in Artec ID's Broadway 3D Face Recognition System, installed last summer in preparation for the crowds. "The system is capable of identifying a person on the walk, in hats or sunglasses," claims Artec ID. "It can also tell apart identical twins." What could go wrong?
Source: Artec ID
Amazon may be working on ways to deliver packages using drones, but at Sochi, drones will play a more traditional role. Russia's Interior Ministry is said to be planning to deploy a number of Zala 421 drones for surveillance. The FSB security force, meanwhile, is expected to use the beefier Austrian-designed, Russian-built Gorizont Air S-100.
Sources: Zala Aero and Gorizont Air
Mark Galeotti, professor of global affairs at NYU, says Russia will deploy its new new Grachenok "anti-sabotage" coastal patrol boat to watch for trouble in the waters around Sochi. The ship is said to include a special "anti-SEAL" sonar system to detect divers attacking from underwater and surface-to-air missiles. It appears to be similar to this Rook-class ship.
Source: Encyclopedia of Safety
When Russia's FSB wants to intercept electronic communications, it relies on a system called SORM. It's not a single device. Rather it's a system with many different components, made by different companies. Vitok-IP, a combination of software and hardware from Norsi-Trans, is one piece of the lawful interception puzzle in Russia.
Source: Norsi-Trans
Russian officials have stockpiled 16 million cubic feet of snow for the Sochi games. If that isn't enough, more than 400 snow cannons, looking something like this, have been deployed to bury the ski runs in man-made snow. All that's missing is flavoring and cones.
Source: Snow Makers
BMW engineers have created a new two-person bobsled using lightweight materials including Kevlar and carbon fiber to maximize aerodynamic performance. In an NBC Sports interview, Michael Scully, the creative director of global design at BMW DesignWorks USA and a former race car designer and driver, noted that the sled, for the first time, enables the US team to shift the bobsled's weight balance forward, backward, or sideways.
Source: BMW
Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn won't be participating in the Sochi games because she recently re-injured her right knee. In February 2013, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) in her right knee and fractured her tibia during a serious fall in Austria. Then last November she tore her ACL again while practicing for the Olympics in Colorado. ACL injuries, unfortunately, are fairly common among athletes and recovery takes many months. But perhaps by the next Winter Olympics, recuperation from ACL injuries, not to mention other soft-tissue trauma, will be easier. A company called Soft Tissue Regeneration has developed a medical technology called L-C Ligament, now in human trials, that uses a biodegradable scaffold to facilitate tissue repair.
Source: STR
When speed skater Shani Davis steps onto the ice in Sochi, he will be wearing a high-performance suit worthy of "The Incredibles." Designers at Under Armour Innovation Lab in Baltimore, Md., have put in more than two years of work to create Davis's suit. It's made from a mix of different fabrics, including nylon, polyester, and spandex. And it has been treated to minimize friction with a substance called Polymer Blend Surface Segregation (POSS). Here's to hoping for better speed skating through chemistry.
Source: Shani Davis
When races are won by hundredths of a second, no detail is too small to accommodate innovation. Columbia Sportswear has created the patented LightRail Zipper, "which is bonded directly onto laser-cut fabric, completely eliminating the need for zipper tape and resulting in the lightest-weight waterproof zipper in the world." That seals it.
Source: Business Wire
Avaya distinguished solution engineer Dean Frohwerk handled network architecture during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and has been fulfilling the same role in Sochi. He's been setting up what he describes as a converged fabric-connected backbone. Utilizing technologies like Shortest Path Bridging and MAC-in-MAC Encapsulation, Avaya has created two separate datacenters divided into four discrete segments, on separate hardware access in case of fiber cuts. In Vancouver, he said in a phone interview, every device used by Olympic personnel -- about 40,000 of them -- showed up as a different MAC address. In Sochi, the network has been designed to scale more efficiently. Through MAC-in-MAC Encapsulation, "the core of the network doesn't see all the different users," he said. "It just sees a few addresses, which reduces scale issues." And necessary because mobile devices keep proliferating -- Frohwerk said he expects over 100,000 just among the Olympics personnel.
Source: Avaya
Avaya distinguished solution engineer Dean Frohwerk handled network architecture during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and has been fulfilling the same role in Sochi. He's been setting up what he describes as a converged fabric-connected backbone. Utilizing technologies like Shortest Path Bridging and MAC-in-MAC Encapsulation, Avaya has created two separate datacenters divided into four discrete segments, on separate hardware access in case of fiber cuts. In Vancouver, he said in a phone interview, every device used by Olympic personnel -- about 40,000 of them -- showed up as a different MAC address. In Sochi, the network has been designed to scale more efficiently. Through MAC-in-MAC Encapsulation, "the core of the network doesn't see all the different users," he said. "It just sees a few addresses, which reduces scale issues." And necessary because mobile devices keep proliferating -- Frohwerk said he expects over 100,000 just among the Olympics personnel.
Source: Avaya
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