Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Oh and that's a bad miss wice. I like that one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about some interesting technology. Um,
Speaker 1: and this was something that has been requested of us
Speaker 1: from a couple of different people. We're gonna talk about sports, specifically,
Speaker 1: specifically hawkeye, right, but but there are other sports we
Speaker 1: we actually we struggled with what we were going to
Speaker 1: call this podcast because down yep I had said hawkeye
Speaker 1: not an avenger, but was told that that was not
Speaker 1: s c O worthy. Well, I you know, when we
Speaker 1: we started thinking about the technology used in sports officiating
Speaker 1: and sports broadcasting, they're all kinds of technologies that they
Speaker 1: used for for a variety of different things. And um,
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I researched some of the same technologies and
Speaker 1: some of different technologies, and in fact, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: we'll get to everything we looked at. We may have
Speaker 1: to come back to it in the future, write it
Speaker 1: down and and and come back to some of it.
Speaker 1: But specifically, we wanted to talk about the Hawkeye officiating
Speaker 1: system because that's one of the topics that both of
Speaker 1: us worked on. And if you haven't heard of this,
Speaker 1: um it may depend on which sports you follow. Hawkeye
Speaker 1: is used. Americans probably would know what best for tennis.
Speaker 1: If you're a tennis fan, you know that for years
Speaker 1: they've used systems to try to help them officiate whether
Speaker 1: or not the ball hits on the line or next
Speaker 1: to the line, Is it in? Is it out? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is Wacknrow going to throw a complete fit that really
Speaker 1: has almost nothing to do with whether or not the
Speaker 1: ball was in or ound. No, but there's like a
Speaker 1: chance that will happen. Yes, and it's always entertaining when
Speaker 1: he does. It was wonderful anyway, But yeah, and to
Speaker 1: varying degrees, Hawkeye is the newest, I would guess, newest system,
Speaker 1: or at least the newest one I've heard of that's
Speaker 1: used for this purpose. And it's highly highly accurate, and
Speaker 1: I see I see in looking into it in greater depth,
Speaker 1: why people are so interested in it. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: not just used in tennis, of course, that's that's what
Speaker 1: Chris was mentioning. That was the one that the American
Speaker 1: folks would probably be most familiar with, but it's also
Speaker 1: been used quite a bit in cricket, which as I
Speaker 1: studied and as I learned more and more about the
Speaker 1: hawkeye system, I realized that compared to cricket, hawkeye is
Speaker 1: really easy to understand. Cricket is impenetrable. I seriously, you
Speaker 1: it's an asseason. All the folks out there playing cricket,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much everybody. How do you even understand what's happening?
Speaker 1: Like do you wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: game and say, are you just making the rules up
Speaker 1: as you go along? Seriously, I don't understand. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna get hate mail for that. And we
Speaker 1: need to have a podcast just on cricket so I
Speaker 1: can listen to it, because I sure as heck couldn't
Speaker 1: talk about all right, anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 1: So well, it's the too share similarities in that you
Speaker 1: have a smallish balls being thrown or hit, and the
Speaker 1: thing is you have to tell whether or not it's
Speaker 1: landing in a certain spot. Um And what hawkeye does
Speaker 1: It can it can tell you, uh, for one thing,
Speaker 1: where the ball is hitting, whether it's in or out
Speaker 1: hits on online. But it also can tell you it
Speaker 1: can give you an idea of the distribution of where
Speaker 1: the ball is landing. And it's a lot easier to tell,
Speaker 1: you know, for example, where a a sock car ball
Speaker 1: or a football or football depending on how you look
Speaker 1: at it, or a basketball, those those balls are are large,
Speaker 1: considerably larger, and they're easier to spot. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: trying to follow something like a hockey puck or a
Speaker 1: cricket ball or a tennis ball is or baseball you
Speaker 1: know there. That's why a lot of these technologies are
Speaker 1: being developed to help augment human ability to see where
Speaker 1: it's going and maybe give us some insight on how
Speaker 1: to play the game a little better. Yeah, So in hawkeye,
Speaker 1: for I mean, it's it's not unusual to think of
Speaker 1: cameras on a sporting event and cameras being used to
Speaker 1: try and determine whether or not a ball has passed
Speaker 1: out of play, and that we've seen that in lots
Speaker 1: of different sports, and you know, you'll see it in
Speaker 1: football even then, where you'll you know, they'll have to
Speaker 1: do a slow motion replay and the referees will be
Speaker 1: looking at to make sure that the call they made
Speaker 1: was an accurate call um if their call has been challenged.
Speaker 1: The same thing in other sports. There are other sports
Speaker 1: where you are allowed to challenge the ruling of a
Speaker 1: referee or umpire and uh, and then you usually have
Speaker 1: either a moment where the referees will talk amongst themselves
Speaker 1: or they will refer to whatever the tape is right right.
Speaker 1: Of course, there is much debate about whether or not
Speaker 1: this is okay or not, and whether, you know, should
Speaker 1: we bring technology into it? Should it just be like
Speaker 1: human error is part of the game, and therefore it's
Speaker 1: part of the game, both on the part of the
Speaker 1: players and the officiates. And other people are saying, can
Speaker 1: we please just take the officiate error out so that
Speaker 1: we just have to worry about the player or well,
Speaker 1: considering how good the technology has gotten, it's understandable that
Speaker 1: this debate has continued because hawkeye itself is at least
Speaker 1: according to my research, accurate within three point six millimeters,
Speaker 1: possibly a little bit better. At least according to the
Speaker 1: person who invented it, Dr Paul Hawkins. Now hawk, Okay,
Speaker 1: you feel like I've heard that Plkins. At any rate.
Speaker 1: The the the interesting thing to me about hawkeye is
Speaker 1: not that it's it's not that it's it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a complex camera system. That part's interesting. But what's really
Speaker 1: interesting to me is that using these cameras and triangulating
Speaker 1: the images captured by these different cameras um and measuring
Speaker 1: the speed of the ball and the path of the ball,
Speaker 1: Hawkeye is able to project where that ball would have
Speaker 1: gone had it not encountered something. All Right, So this
Speaker 1: is not necessarily important in every sport, but in some
Speaker 1: sports it means a great deal. This is where we
Speaker 1: get back to cricket, where I was having a really
Speaker 1: hard time figure out why do you even need this
Speaker 1: for cricket? Um Because for those of you who are
Speaker 1: cricket fans who or perhaps you're not familiar with say
Speaker 1: American baseball, we don't really look at replays for baseball
Speaker 1: that that doesn't really have been well often. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's another one of those things that keeps coming up,
Speaker 1: should there be should there be a replay system in baseball?
Speaker 1: So That's why I was wondering, like, why do you
Speaker 1: need it for? Why do you need it for a cricket? Well, cricket,
Speaker 1: you know, they have their elements in cricket that are
Speaker 1: similar to baseball. But that just fools you. It reels
Speaker 1: you in and then think makes you think you understand
Speaker 1: how what's happening, but you really don't. Well, the two
Speaker 1: sports are cousins, they do share some similarity. So the
Speaker 1: batsman in cricket stand in front of the stumps right
Speaker 1: the wicket based based on what I know of cricket. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have the bowler who lobs the ball, uh,
Speaker 1: and the bowler's aim is to knock over the wicket,
Speaker 1: to knock over the stumps, and the batsman is defending
Speaker 1: the stomps, trying to hit the ball out of the
Speaker 1: way and earn runs. Well, sometimes the ball will hit
Speaker 1: the batsman and there there is a a a term
Speaker 1: called leg for wicket, which is essentially meaning that the
Speaker 1: batsman's body has has encountered the ball and that the
Speaker 1: ball would have continued had the batsman not gotten in
Speaker 1: the way and then knocked the wicket over. Well, clearly
Speaker 1: that would be an unsportsmanlike way to prevent the bowler
Speaker 1: from hitting the wicket. So hawkeye has been used in
Speaker 1: cricket to project where the path of the ball would
Speaker 1: have been had the batter not batsman, not been in
Speaker 1: the way. So the idea is that, well, sometimes the
Speaker 1: ball would have hit the wicket, sometimes it would have
Speaker 1: bounced over the wicket or bounced to the left or
Speaker 1: to the right of the wicket. And yet if you're officiating,
Speaker 1: if you make this call, uh, you know, you're basing
Speaker 1: it on your own perception of what's happening right, your
Speaker 1: own the angle that you're looking at, and um uh
Speaker 1: you know how closely you're paying attention. Hawkeye is supposed
Speaker 1: to try and take some of that guess workout by
Speaker 1: stating by by measuring the path of the ball, the
Speaker 1: speed of the ball, and and essentially guessing or calculating
Speaker 1: where the future path would have been. So that's a
Speaker 1: very useful feature there because it takes theoretically, if it works,
Speaker 1: it takes the human element, the guessing, the estimation out
Speaker 1: of it. Now, what I find interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that humans we tend to really like this kind of prediction, right,
Speaker 1: predicting where something's going to go based upon the angle
Speaker 1: and the speed. Because if we didn't love that, angry
Speaker 1: Birds never would have become a huge hit. But this
Speaker 1: is serious, I'm serious. Think about it. Think of all
Speaker 1: the games that we play that depend upon accurately assessing
Speaker 1: how the path of an object is moving through the air.
Speaker 1: I mean baseball and football, and both depend on it
Speaker 1: because you have to be at the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time to intercept it. Right. Let's let I
Speaker 1: mean get right down to it. Sports. A lot of
Speaker 1: geeks say that they don't like sports, and that may
Speaker 1: necessarily be true. Two, but there is a geeky element
Speaker 1: to sports otherwise, and I don't know of a sport
Speaker 1: for which this is not true. We wouldn't be keeping
Speaker 1: these elaborate statistics about the you know, well, in the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter, the team that is a head is likely
Speaker 1: to win by seventy six percent of the time. And
Speaker 1: you know, he gets on base, he's likely to score
Speaker 1: you know, four d per cent. You know as well,
Speaker 1: you get into them and totally messed that up. But
Speaker 1: I'm basically they keep a lot of the sports statisticians
Speaker 1: keep all kinds of amazingly uh minute statistics about every
Speaker 1: living every little thing you know, on days when it's
Speaker 1: seventy six degrees and you know this kind of right here,
Speaker 1: his name is Paul Revere. That's just going to open
Speaker 1: another door to another world we don't want to go
Speaker 1: to right now. But yeah, I mean, this is another
Speaker 1: one of those examples of adding technology that's going to
Speaker 1: help us track that much more information about the sport
Speaker 1: and gives us something else to argue about, which is
Speaker 1: another sporting tradition, right, but that's sometimes more entertaining than
Speaker 1: whatever is actually going on, depends on the sport. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, we're interested in what would have
Speaker 1: happened and how likely is this particular outcome versus that
Speaker 1: particular outcome based on history and the ambient temperature and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other things. And hawkeye does take a
Speaker 1: lot of that into account. That's the one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about hawkeye is, um, there's a battery of cameras.
Speaker 1: They go around the playing surface, whatever sport you're playing.
Speaker 1: And there are people who want hawkeye used for baseball,
Speaker 1: American baseball, cricket. It's the pitch, right or but yeah,
Speaker 1: but but the cameras are only part of the story,
Speaker 1: as Jonathan pointed out earlier, and yes there is there
Speaker 1: are computers on the back end, but what what really
Speaker 1: fascinated me is and the number cameras depends on whatever
Speaker 1: sport is in question. There might be more or fewer
Speaker 1: depending on the area. Ten yea cameras. It is a
Speaker 1: lot of cameras, especially considering the size of a tennis court.
Speaker 1: But the fascinating thing to me is the prep work
Speaker 1: that takes to go in. And the reason that Hawkeye
Speaker 1: isn't used more wide in a more widespread way is
Speaker 1: it's expensive. You might say, why, it's just some cameras. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're sophisticated cameras, sure, but you also require people
Speaker 1: to run the system. And part of that is it
Speaker 1: takes prep work. The surface of the playing surface, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, is mapped because it's I can't think of
Speaker 1: a playing surface and it seems flat to us when
Speaker 1: we go out to stand on the on the tennis
Speaker 1: court or or the cricket pitch, but it's not. And
Speaker 1: the computer maps. The Hawkeye system needs to map the
Speaker 1: surface of the ground and where the lines are and
Speaker 1: where all the things are on the feet yield so
Speaker 1: that it knows essentially where everything is. It takes into
Speaker 1: account the temperature and other factors because of course, the
Speaker 1: the tennis court could heat up depending on the color
Speaker 1: of the tennis court, that the material the court is
Speaker 1: made of, grass for example, or clay. Um clay is
Speaker 1: a little bit different because you know the clay, you
Speaker 1: can actually see if you've ever watched a clay court match, uh,
Speaker 1: you'll see that it leaves a little dust mark when
Speaker 1: the when the ball hits. That's easier for them to tell.
Speaker 1: But on other surfaces like grass, it's not as easy
Speaker 1: to tell, but it will heat up and that can
Speaker 1: actually change whether or not the the court is expanding
Speaker 1: or contracting depending on the temperature. And Hawkeye has to
Speaker 1: take all of that information into account um so that
Speaker 1: when the cameras do record the trajectory of the ball,
Speaker 1: and it also needs to know how the ball is
Speaker 1: going to act. Right if you're you're looking at a
Speaker 1: tennis ball, how does a tennis ball behave when it
Speaker 1: hits the earth versus cricket ball. Sure, so it takes
Speaker 1: all of this stuff into account, which is why the
Speaker 1: system is so sophisticated and so remarkably accurate. At tracking
Speaker 1: where the ball is going to land based on you know,
Speaker 1: the way the ball is hit or is thrown, and
Speaker 1: the surface it hits in the in the environment that
Speaker 1: it hits. I think that is absolutely amazing how how
Speaker 1: how it works like that, And it does require human
Speaker 1: intervention too, because people have to operate the equipment beforehand
Speaker 1: and during the game or the match to h to
Speaker 1: make it work. And there's definitely some controversy here as well,
Speaker 1: because you're talking about I mean, yes, Christmas pointing out
Speaker 1: it is very precise as a margin of error around
Speaker 1: three point six millimeters, that's pretty tiny. But should you
Speaker 1: have a situation where Hawkeye is essentially telling you that
Speaker 1: let's let's say that it's a tennis match. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: say it's a Test match and the the the the
Speaker 1: referee has said that it is uh that the ball
Speaker 1: was hit out, and then the other the player who
Speaker 1: hit the ball, challenges that call and so they review
Speaker 1: it and Hawkeye says it was in, but it was
Speaker 1: in by one millimeter. Well that's within that range of
Speaker 1: error at every point six. So then you have to
Speaker 1: decide does that does the is the referees call upheld
Speaker 1: or overturned. If it's overturned, how do you justify that
Speaker 1: when the the the the distance that it was you
Speaker 1: know that that it fell within is less than the
Speaker 1: margin of error for the system. See, there's an all
Speaker 1: new uh, all the dimension of arguing about sports to
Speaker 1: be like, no, that's within the margin of error. You
Speaker 1: cannot you cannot overturn a call based upon that. I
Speaker 1: mean that that that could become that could be the
Speaker 1: outcome of that argument. Or they could say, all right,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna trust the machine over the person even
Speaker 1: though the machine gave us a reading that could theoretically
Speaker 1: be wrong. Um. Yeah, that's the sticky thing. And of course,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about one millimeter, you get into a
Speaker 1: point where without the system, you know, you just have
Speaker 1: to go with whatever the the referee or or officiate says.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have you don't have the benefit
Speaker 1: of checking back on with another call, and sometimes you
Speaker 1: just you know, you got to accept the fact that
Speaker 1: there is this element of error that's going to happen
Speaker 1: because there's no perfect system to judge it. I think
Speaker 1: if there were a perfect system, would it change the game?
Speaker 1: It can? Um from what I've seen Uh, A lot
Speaker 1: of the tennis players seem to like Hawkeye. They seem
Speaker 1: to feel that it's pretty accurate. And if you're willing,
Speaker 1: if you're willing to agree that the system is accurate
Speaker 1: and to trust it, then that's one thing. But I
Speaker 1: think you're right, Jonathan that if if a call comes
Speaker 1: within that margin of error, even when you said, yes,
Speaker 1: you know what, I trust this computerized system over the
Speaker 1: official when it's a really tight call like that, I
Speaker 1: believe it to be accurate. If they says one millimeter
Speaker 1: and you go, well, yeah, but it's precise to within three,
Speaker 1: it really could have been out. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: that causes even the people who are really behind the
Speaker 1: technology too, you know, because it's an emotional issue, especially
Speaker 1: when you've been playing hard and it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's an important match like you know, the Wimbledon final
Speaker 1: for example, or the French Open, one of the Grand
Speaker 1: Slam championships. It's you know, I think even the people
Speaker 1: that are behind it are going to be a little
Speaker 1: reticent to just trust the machine. But that's that you
Speaker 1: have to trust the humans. If you don't trust the machines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that does come down. Yeah, exactly. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: does that mean that something we know of that's accurate
Speaker 1: up to three point six millimeters is somehow worse than
Speaker 1: a humans perception? Is the humans perception actually more accurate
Speaker 1: in this case? I mean it's a delicate subject. And
Speaker 1: like like we said before, with the the clay courts,
Speaker 1: that's where you're you start thinking, hey, maybe we just
Speaker 1: need to start playing on clay a lot, because then
Speaker 1: at least we can look at where the mark is
Speaker 1: and say, all right, now, clearly this is where the
Speaker 1: ball hit and you know the ball, Yeah, the ball
Speaker 1: bounced out, but the ball initially hit within the lines.
Speaker 1: Of course, then you're gonna have all the players who
Speaker 1: specialize on all the other courts say no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no grass courts where it's at. Yeah, And then you
Speaker 1: have the well, how how accurate is the little dust mark? Right?
Speaker 1: Is that within three millimeters Someone's been standing over there
Speaker 1: stomping a lot. So I'm not going to totally entrust
Speaker 1: that either. Yeah, right here, sports is one that's one
Speaker 1: of the that's one of those issues where uh, seemingly
Speaker 1: tiny events can erupt in huge controversy. Yeah, so at
Speaker 1: any rate, I do think this is a pretty cool
Speaker 1: um device. And when Christmas talking about the back end
Speaker 1: with the computers, they're all obviously running algorithms that allow
Speaker 1: the the Hawkeye system to project where the ball either
Speaker 1: was going to go or it can predict where the
Speaker 1: ball actually landed. UM. The usually if you're talking about triangulation,
Speaker 1: you're talking about at least feeds from at least three
Speaker 1: cameras being the triangle right, and then based upon those
Speaker 1: three those three streams of data, that's what the Hawkeye
Speaker 1: system uses to predict where exactly it landed or where
Speaker 1: it was going to go. Uh. It's a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: system and I would be very interested to see it
Speaker 1: applied to other sports as well. UM. I think, for
Speaker 1: one thing, even if you're not using it as a
Speaker 1: way to to back up calls or overturned calls, it
Speaker 1: could in theory be a really useful system just for
Speaker 1: players and teams and to to really kind of see,
Speaker 1: you know, well, I meant to throw this kind of ball,
Speaker 1: you know, the ball this way, but it actually came
Speaker 1: out that way, or you know, uh, how accurate am
Speaker 1: I when I'm trying to hit the wicket in cricket? Um,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. It could be really useful, although
Speaker 1: again it's very expensive system, so really you only see
Speaker 1: these things trotted it out for actual games as opposed
Speaker 1: to you know, practices and things like that. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to note to based on on what you
Speaker 1: just said and the numbers I saw. UM. And I
Speaker 1: should say that I did UM most of my or
Speaker 1: a lot of my research from an article uh in
Speaker 1: the New York Times that appeared in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight by Aaron Pilloffer. UM. He said, the system itself
Speaker 1: actually costs around a hundred thousand dollars or so. UM.
Speaker 1: That probably goes up a little bit or has gone
Speaker 1: up a little bit in the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: And I think it probably depends on the arena and
Speaker 1: the and the type of system, the number of cameras
Speaker 1: you have to have. UM. It also requires again you
Speaker 1: have to pay people to run the equipment, so it
Speaker 1: is not inexpensive, and it's not the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you know, you'd have to set aside a good chunk
Speaker 1: of change to put that on your practice fields. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you want to be really, really good,
Speaker 1: maybe it's worth it. Yeah, I saw that. I saw
Speaker 1: it was also used in UM the snooker Championships. Really yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: I wen't have how many cameras you would need because
Speaker 1: that's a really small playing surface relative to say a
Speaker 1: cricket pitch. Yes, but you know what that that would
Speaker 1: be fascinating though, because you could you could measure. I
Speaker 1: would assume that a surface that small would be easier
Speaker 1: to map with a computer UM, and the temperature would
Speaker 1: be more controlled because it's something that you do indoors mostly.
Speaker 1: I don't think they don't think they play arena. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, that would be kind of interesting. And yeah,
Speaker 1: well the idea is that it'll it'll kind of show
Speaker 1: why shots went awry. Yeah, right, like someone when you
Speaker 1: see a championship snooker player. I'm not gonna make any
Speaker 1: jokes about them, but when you see them line up
Speaker 1: a shot, you think, you know, well, why did that
Speaker 1: shot not work out the way it was planned? And
Speaker 1: that's the ideas that with this system you could actually
Speaker 1: review that particular shot and see what exactly went wrong.
Speaker 1: Was there some sort of imperfection in the table surface
Speaker 1: or was it merely the technique the player used that
Speaker 1: you know, it made a wrong judgment and that's why
Speaker 1: it didn't work out. That's kind of interesting. Yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 1: We're we're past the twenty minute mark of our podcast,
Speaker 1: and and I'm thinking I've already thought of a couple
Speaker 1: of things that I didn't do any research on sports
Speaker 1: related technology that we can talk about later. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we can definitely do a couple of sports podcasts.
Speaker 1: And it's I do think that it's an illustration of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not sports aren't just for the athletes.
Speaker 1: There's something for the geeks to get into as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have two very simple camera systems I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about are not These are not Hawkeye systems. This
Speaker 1: is unrelated to that, but I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: it because it ties into a podcast we did um
Speaker 1: earlier several months ago. And it also I just think
Speaker 1: is it's kind of those cool innovations in technology that
Speaker 1: aren't as you know, we talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that's really high tech, you know, complex computer systems
Speaker 1: and high speed like these cameras, and that the Hawkeye
Speaker 1: system uses their high definition, high speed cameras so they
Speaker 1: can slow this action down to a crawl. But not
Speaker 1: all systems need to be quite that complex. And a
Speaker 1: good example of this is I don't have to thank
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang for this, our producer, because he he actually
Speaker 1: sent me the information. UM. Some systems designed by Garrett
Speaker 1: Brown are actually deceptively simple and yet they have really
Speaker 1: helped with capturing footage, specifically for events like the Olympics.
Speaker 1: And Garrett Brown, if that name sounds familiar to you,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who invented the steady cam. So we've
Speaker 1: talked about the steady cam in a previous episode, and
Speaker 1: Garrett Brown has continued to innovate camera systems. UM. He's
Speaker 1: retired from shooting films himself, but he still works on
Speaker 1: designing systems to capture footage in unusual situations and for
Speaker 1: some of those he developed systems for to capture footage
Speaker 1: for the Olympics. One of them is called the mob cam. Now,
Speaker 1: the mob cam is designed for swimming events, so if
Speaker 1: you're watching the races, you know, a swimming race. UM,
Speaker 1: this is the camera that's on the bottom of the
Speaker 1: pool that can take footage shot upward, so you get
Speaker 1: to see the swimmers as they swim through the pool.
Speaker 1: It's actually mounted on a track a little thin track
Speaker 1: and it's operated by pulleys manually. So Garrett Brown would
Speaker 1: demonstrate this by you don't have this pulley system where
Speaker 1: he would have a crank that would be attached to
Speaker 1: a spool and then what he could do is turn
Speaker 1: that and it would pull the line which would then
Speaker 1: and pull the the camera on the track under the water,
Speaker 1: so you could follow along with the swimmers, and he
Speaker 1: would watch on a monitor so he could keep the
Speaker 1: right speed, and then when it would get to the
Speaker 1: when the swimmer would get to the end, if they
Speaker 1: it was like a race that had multiple lengths, then
Speaker 1: he would just reverse start turning the crank the other
Speaker 1: way and the camera would move the other way down
Speaker 1: the pool. Um it's all. The reason why I decided
Speaker 1: to go manual was because he was afraid that using
Speaker 1: some sort of motorized or robotic system would um would
Speaker 1: raise ire among judges and athletes because it would it
Speaker 1: could theoretically change the conditions of the pool, and you
Speaker 1: don't want to do that when you're talking about world
Speaker 1: class Olympic athletes where the tiniest detail can affect his
Speaker 1: or her performance, you don't want to create cause for concern.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, it's a neat little camera and you just
Speaker 1: and it just scoots along the bottom. And that one's
Speaker 1: a couple of decades old actually, but a more recent
Speaker 1: one that was introduced in the two thousand Olympics his
Speaker 1: the dive cam. Now the dive cam again deceptively simple.
Speaker 1: Imagine you've got an Olympic sized swimming pool. You've got
Speaker 1: a tube that is uh extends all the way up
Speaker 1: to the height of the um diving board and down
Speaker 1: into the water. The tube is weighted, it's it's got
Speaker 1: air on the inside. It's capped at the top, so
Speaker 1: it's weighted so that it doesn't float away. But the
Speaker 1: tube is set up so that the cameras at the
Speaker 1: very top of the tube when the diver is about
Speaker 1: to begin his or her dive, and there's a release
Speaker 1: another Pulley system, but there's a release where you where
Speaker 1: the operator releases the camera just as the diver starts
Speaker 1: to dive. And because we all obey the law of gravity,
Speaker 1: we all fall at the same speed. So the camera
Speaker 1: falls at the same speed as the diver and goes
Speaker 1: all the way down and even goes down into below
Speaker 1: the water line, right, which you can do because the
Speaker 1: tube exactly the tube extends beneath the water line, so
Speaker 1: the camera continues to go down and capture footage of
Speaker 1: the diver as he or she enters the water. And
Speaker 1: then there's some bungee cords attached to the camera that
Speaker 1: will slow it's descent so it doesn't just crash at
Speaker 1: the bottom. And then you use a pulley system to
Speaker 1: raise the camera back up and you're ready to go
Speaker 1: for the next dive. So it's really kind of a
Speaker 1: neat way to follow a diver all the way down
Speaker 1: the entire uh length of his or her dive. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, no, no, go ahead. You were about
Speaker 1: to say something, it's gonna say. UM, I could talk
Speaker 1: about one other technology that I investigated, UM and UH
Speaker 1: That basically is another camera related technology, and it's very
Speaker 1: similar to Hawkeye in some ways, UM, most notably in
Speaker 1: that it requires UM it requires mapping the field of play,
Speaker 1: and that's UH something we actually have a great article
Speaker 1: on on how stuff works dot com. UM It's something
Speaker 1: originally developed apparently by a company called sport Vision, a
Speaker 1: New York City company that debuted its first and ten
Speaker 1: system on a game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore
Speaker 1: Ravens on septem So we're talking about American football here,
Speaker 1: and that's if you've ever wondered watched a football game
Speaker 1: and wondered how they it the first down line to appear,
Speaker 1: that yellow line to appear on the field, because you
Speaker 1: know that's not painted on there. UM. In American football, uh,
Speaker 1: you play with a the team has given four downs
Speaker 1: to make a first down. Basically, they have to go
Speaker 1: ten yards UM to get a first down, and they
Speaker 1: have four chances to do that in order to advance
Speaker 1: down the field and hopefully score. That's the objective anyway,
Speaker 1: while the other team tries to prevent that from happening. UM.
Speaker 1: So there is a line of scrimmage, which is the line,
Speaker 1: the imaginary line on on which the ball starts when
Speaker 1: they start to play. And then they have a line
Speaker 1: that is originally at the first down uh ten yards
Speaker 1: away and usually this is marked by a giant piece
Speaker 1: of orange appears to be plastic. I've never actually touched one, UM,
Speaker 1: but it's on the side of the field, and really
Speaker 1: from a televised angle, it's very hard to see because
Speaker 1: they like to zoom in on the players and and
Speaker 1: see what they're doing. So they don't usually zoom out
Speaker 1: to the point where you can actually see that. So somebody,
Speaker 1: apparently Sport Vision, decided to create a system by which
Speaker 1: you could actually show this to the viewer. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: Like uh, tennis courts and and cricket pitches, the football
Speaker 1: field is not flat, not completely flat. Of course, people
Speaker 1: tear it up, especially outdoor arenas where it's been rainy. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, the cleats tear up the field, It gets
Speaker 1: mashed up. Plus um, the field is raised a little
Speaker 1: bit in the center to help it drain. UM. So
Speaker 1: it has to take the system has to take that
Speaker 1: into account. And I should point out to that there
Speaker 1: are other companies that offer this technology. UM. But in
Speaker 1: order to make this happen, there is a truck full
Speaker 1: of equipment off the field as well, and it requires
Speaker 1: some chroma key the green screen effect that we've talked
Speaker 1: about and UM and other podcasts as well. They have
Speaker 1: to key out the colors of the players uniforms. UM.
Speaker 1: But they showed the imaginary line on the field and
Speaker 1: UM by by using the chroma key technology, they can
Speaker 1: avoid showing the line on top of the players are
Speaker 1: on top of the ball um and uh, they can
Speaker 1: they can show this imaginary line to the viewers. Now,
Speaker 1: of course it's not it's there just to illustrate, So
Speaker 1: it's not supposed to have the same kind of accuracy
Speaker 1: that the Hawkeye system does. It's just to give a
Speaker 1: little frame of reference to the viewer. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: have an idea, and that's why you know when uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, like most sports, UH, it can be
Speaker 1: a game of very very small I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: to the Hawkeye system millimeters, very small increments of of measurement.
Speaker 1: So when a player appears to get to have earned
Speaker 1: a first down through a running player passing play um,
Speaker 1: and it appears that way to us watching at home,
Speaker 1: it may not actually be the case because that yellow
Speaker 1: line is not accurate. It's a a very good approximation
Speaker 1: of where the line is supposed to be. So that's
Speaker 1: why you will still see the officials use the chains
Speaker 1: to measure um. Although you know that's always kind of
Speaker 1: made me laugh too, because they carry the chain out
Speaker 1: in the middle of the field and I'm going, you
Speaker 1: guys just ran out here with that thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you're going that looks about right, um, But which always
Speaker 1: amuses me. But um, but that's how they do that.
Speaker 1: And I had always wondered that too, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, since it does involve cameras, it does involve um,
Speaker 1: a special camera for that purpose. Um. According to our
Speaker 1: our article, it does require quite a bit of computer
Speaker 1: technology as well, because you have to take into account
Speaker 1: the orientation of the camera. UM. You know, they do.
Speaker 1: The producer of the broadcast is also choosing which camera
Speaker 1: to focus on, So it has to the line has
Speaker 1: to appear and roughly the same spot no matter where
Speaker 1: you're you're showing it from. So it has taken to
Speaker 1: account the perspective of the vision angle. UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: and it also has to to be able to show
Speaker 1: the line on the field and not on the top
Speaker 1: of the players and referees in the ball. UM. But
Speaker 1: that's a pretty neat system. And I assume that that's
Speaker 1: pretty close to the system they used to broadcast graphics
Speaker 1: when they show ads or other information about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the field. They you know, they'll show it
Speaker 1: in a place where the players aren't. UM tell you
Speaker 1: what down it is or how many yards they have
Speaker 1: to go. UM. But that's that's pretty neat and it
Speaker 1: does require again, like like the other technologies we've talked
Speaker 1: about today, a special uh special cameras um and it
Speaker 1: does you know, the camera itself has to be communicate
Speaker 1: where it is in regard to the play and the
Speaker 1: line of scrimmage, in the line of where the first
Speaker 1: down is supposed to be earned in order to help
Speaker 1: the camera or help the computers know roughly where to
Speaker 1: put the line. So that's uh, it's fascinating stuff. It's
Speaker 1: something I always wondered about and never really took the
Speaker 1: time to look into until it was time to do
Speaker 1: the research. So I'm glad. I'm glad we did. But
Speaker 1: there are other things that I would like to talk
Speaker 1: about in a future podcast perhaps maybe uh maybe down
Speaker 1: the and we've tackled some other topics first. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got a great patent for a a
Speaker 1: pitch speed and strike zone invention that I think would
Speaker 1: never ever ever see the light of day, but I'd
Speaker 1: love to talk about it. Yeah, that's that's definitely one
Speaker 1: of those. And the baseball tracking technology where the baseball
Speaker 1: crosses the plate. Uh, if you're not a baseball fan,
Speaker 1: a lot of times they'll show uh. During the game,
Speaker 1: they'll show an angle camera angle where you see from
Speaker 1: behind the picture where the where the pitch is going
Speaker 1: to the batter, and as they analyze it, the commentators
Speaker 1: will put on a tracker where we'll show you where
Speaker 1: where it was in the strike zone. Right, I'm curious
Speaker 1: to see. I haven't gone enough research on that yet
Speaker 1: to talk about it confidently, but I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that. And possibly even that glow puck they used
Speaker 1: to use in hockey globe. Well, we'll just have to
Speaker 1: save that for a later discussion. We're gonna wrap this
Speaker 1: one up. If you guys have any questions or comments,
Speaker 1: you can let us know. You can let us know
Speaker 1: on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled the is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: hs W, or you can email us. That email address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For moralness and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff
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