Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says our players
Speaker 1: are fast and strong and brave, and your ganys not
Speaker 1: so much. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bob, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. So do you all love sports? No? No,
Speaker 1: we're nerdy non sports types. I can. I can enjoy
Speaker 1: playing a sport, not usually so much into watching that.
Speaker 1: I enjoy watching a baseball game once in a while.
Speaker 1: I love hockey, I can. I can get into hockey
Speaker 1: and uh soccer football, And we're being told to call
Speaker 1: it by many people. Hockey is a sore subject here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, poor thrashers. Yeah, but at an't rate to
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, there is a sport I know you love.
Speaker 1: What's that? And it's the fine masculine ballet of professional wrestling,
Speaker 1: and that that is a sports entertainment and you genuinely
Speaker 1: love it. You know, sometimes we think about what's the
Speaker 1: future of of and we can't think of a thing, right,
Speaker 1: how about sports? Well? How come on? Yeah, alright, So
Speaker 1: you had a specific science fiction film where you you
Speaker 1: wanted to describe the sport in that and how that's
Speaker 1: got to be the future, right, Yeah, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the movie Starship Troopers. But yeah, of course we're We're
Speaker 1: always talking about Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. Is so so
Speaker 1: deep in the world of sci fi sports. Yeah, well, no,
Speaker 1: I actually brought this up because it was when I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of future sci fi movies that
Speaker 1: have sports scenes in them. This was just the first
Speaker 1: one that came to mind. And there's really no good
Speaker 1: technology and it, as far as I can recall, the
Speaker 1: uniforms look weird. They're wearing these shiny jumpsuits and uh,
Speaker 1: and they've got weird looking helmets that are more kind
Speaker 1: of like hockey helmets than foot ball helmets. And people
Speaker 1: keep doing these jumping somersaults like eight feet in the air.
Speaker 1: They don't explain why. I don't think you usually see
Speaker 1: that in real football. Doesn't really give a notable advantage. No,
Speaker 1: And also the football looks like it's made of metal,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure why that would be a thing
Speaker 1: people would change, like, because when I want to catch
Speaker 1: quick moving objects thrown at me by highly athletic people,
Speaker 1: I want those objects to be made of metal, really dense,
Speaker 1: so that way it causes huge amounts of damage. Right,
Speaker 1: it might just be a regular football painted to be
Speaker 1: shiny gray. I don't know if the exactly right. Futuristic
Speaker 1: things like spaceships are shiny and made of metal, so
Speaker 1: you know this football by the same logic. Uh No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work. So what about what about Blearn's ball?
Speaker 1: That's a phenomenal sport. It's a wonderful sport. I can't
Speaker 1: really explain the rules. I think they're kept obscure on purpose.
Speaker 1: It seems to be something about hitting a ball that's
Speaker 1: attached to a tether. Uh, and then robots pop out
Speaker 1: of holes. I think there's a multi ball setting like
Speaker 1: in pinball machines. But other than that, I know there's
Speaker 1: some other ones with James Khan. Yeah, you might be
Speaker 1: thinking of Death Race. Yes, actually there was a terrible
Speaker 1: remake roller Ball, You're right, or um or Pyramid the
Speaker 1: game that was played in the new version of Battlestar Galactica,
Speaker 1: and it came out although we never saw it as
Speaker 1: it was really intended to be played. It was all
Speaker 1: like post apocalypse version of of Pyramids. As far as
Speaker 1: Star Treks concerned, I think the only sport that survives
Speaker 1: is fencing since Sulu goes crazy with that one episode.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's one of the things that we thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we this isn't an episode of you never
Speaker 1: see that in science fiction. We really wanted to look
Speaker 1: at what are some of the cutting edge technologies that
Speaker 1: are are starting to debut in sports today in various
Speaker 1: parts of sport, not just the performance, but sometimes the training.
Speaker 1: We're just keeping people safe, right, Well, I think in
Speaker 1: reality we're already doing better futuristic sports tech than the
Speaker 1: Starship Troopers middle football. Yeah, just being able to if you,
Speaker 1: if you are the type to watch a football game,
Speaker 1: you know you can see where the first down line
Speaker 1: is on your television screen. That alone, that that's simple
Speaker 1: technology alone, is superior to the the Starship Troopers version. Yeah. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the first thing I would ask about the future
Speaker 1: of sports. I sometimes watch people playing football or boxing
Speaker 1: or something like that and see and see it looks
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of injury going on here. Is
Speaker 1: there a way to still get all of the athletic
Speaker 1: enjoyment people get out of playing and watching contact sports
Speaker 1: without so much risk to your body. Yeah, that's um,
Speaker 1: that's a big concern obviously. And you know, there have
Speaker 1: been some very high profile news stories that have come
Speaker 1: out over the last few years of UH football players
Speaker 1: in particular, suffering terrible injuries from multiple concussions. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: to the point where a couple of people have lost
Speaker 1: their lives, um because they've suffered such terrible brain injury.
Speaker 1: The thing about a concussion, which you know is an
Speaker 1: injury to your brain. It often is caused by the
Speaker 1: brain shifting, twisting, stretching rapidly, or colliding with the inside
Speaker 1: of your scullion. That that it causes uh damage to
Speaker 1: the brain, damage to the brain cells that you can
Speaker 1: recover from with rest, but it does make you more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to further injury. And it's not always something that's
Speaker 1: easily detectable. It's not an external injury, so you know,
Speaker 1: unless you're paying close attention to someone, you may not notice. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: there are sometimes indications like a person's walk might change
Speaker 1: the way they hold themselves, might change their speeching patterns. Right,
Speaker 1: but you know, in the in the context of a
Speaker 1: game that's really fast moving, UH, you not pick up
Speaker 1: on it. They might not really be aware of it either.
Speaker 1: They may just you know, the idea of oh, I
Speaker 1: had my bell wrong, I felt a little out of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they run the risk of getting even more seriously
Speaker 1: injured if they continue to play. It's so serious that
Speaker 1: the CDC, the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: created a document that educates people on the dangers of
Speaker 1: concussions in general and in football in particular. It's specifically
Speaker 1: geared for really for parents and for coaches, for the
Speaker 1: people and officials referees, is for the people who would
Speaker 1: be watching over football games to know what to look
Speaker 1: for in order to spot problems before they become really serious. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so it's a big deal, and it's it's really important,
Speaker 1: and it's got some people thinking, well, what can we
Speaker 1: do to help minimize the risk of concussion. And one
Speaker 1: of the big things is actually not related to technology
Speaker 1: at all. It's just related on how the game is played.
Speaker 1: And the big bit of advice I've seen is keep
Speaker 1: your head up. That's the big one is that don't
Speaker 1: don't put your head down in anticipation of a tackle,
Speaker 1: whether you're making the tackle or you're about you know
Speaker 1: that you're about to be tackled, keep your head up,
Speaker 1: and that helps reduce the risk. Keep in the mind
Speaker 1: that rotation can also cause a concussion. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be impact, So if your head is rotated very quickly,
Speaker 1: that could be enough to create a concussion. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's one thing is just behavior. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: there are people working on technologies to help protect football players.
Speaker 1: So a biomechanical professor at Purdue developed a football helmet
Speaker 1: liner that's supposed to reduce g forces to a player's
Speaker 1: brain by fifty per cent. So the thing about football helmets,
Speaker 1: you know, they've got that hard shell which is really
Speaker 1: there to protect against skull fractures, so it's not necessary.
Speaker 1: It can't necessarily protect against um uh concussions because that
Speaker 1: that energy gets transferred through the helmet to the person's head,
Speaker 1: and while there they might not suffer a broken bone,
Speaker 1: they could still suffer a concussion. So this liner is
Speaker 1: meant to absorb some of that impact and disperse it
Speaker 1: so that you receive less of that hit as a result,
Speaker 1: and thus reduced the risk of having a concussion. Um
Speaker 1: The way they designed it, the way this this professor
Speaker 1: actually designed. It was first put he put sensors in
Speaker 1: helmets between the padding and the actual helmet to detect
Speaker 1: the strength and location of hits during a particular play,
Speaker 1: like he would be able to see how that player
Speaker 1: and uh was was playing and whether or not they
Speaker 1: were at danger of a concussion or other serious brain
Speaker 1: injury and um Also he wanted to find a way
Speaker 1: to try and reduce this rotational force, this other problem
Speaker 1: of if a player's head turns too quickly, that could
Speaker 1: be an issue. And so his idea is to have
Speaker 1: a double shell helmet where you have an external hard shell,
Speaker 1: then you have a layer of hatting, and then you
Speaker 1: have an internal hard shell and then the liner and
Speaker 1: those two shells can move a little independently of one another,
Speaker 1: so it takes some of that rotation. They don't know
Speaker 1: yet if this will actually be effective in preventing concussions.
Speaker 1: They said that it's going to take some years of
Speaker 1: testing to see how well it performs and whether or
Speaker 1: not it actually is reducing that risk. But at least
Speaker 1: it's it's a move toward that direction. But they're not
Speaker 1: the only people who are using sensors to monitor that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right right. The Florida Times Union reported
Speaker 1: that helmet sensors are required now in the Arena Football League.
Speaker 1: So arena football. Uh you guys, are you familiar with
Speaker 1: the arena sports ball? Okay? So arena football is played indoors.
Speaker 1: The field is smaller than an NFL field football. It's
Speaker 1: it's faster paced, it's meant to have higher scoring games,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a it's an alternative for the
Speaker 1: big NFL game. So it's the it's it's like the
Speaker 1: third largest UH football league behind the National Football League
Speaker 1: in the Canadian Football League. Okay, what was it, the
Speaker 1: one that was invented by that guy from one of
Speaker 1: the wrestling or man. Yeah, it's similar thinking of the XLA,
Speaker 1: which was shut down after like a year. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: no longer a thing, but they just mainly to have
Speaker 1: people body slamming each other on the field. They played
Speaker 1: by a variation of arena football rules, so variation being
Speaker 1: a kind word for it. Uh. Yeah. The XFL did
Speaker 1: not last very long. But the sensors inside the ad
Speaker 1: nobody tell them that extreme doesn't start with an X.
Speaker 1: This is a problem. A lot of X games come on.
Speaker 1: It's not unique at all. Okay, I'm sorry, I apologize.
Speaker 1: Getting back on track. So, the sensors measure impact and
Speaker 1: can actually alert players and coaches and officials when a
Speaker 1: collision is strong enough where a concussion may have happened.
Speaker 1: The sensors are attached to little blinking lights that are
Speaker 1: on the base of the helmet, and if the impact
Speaker 1: is greater than a certain threshold, the lights start blinking.
Speaker 1: The official says, all right, well, you cannot play until
Speaker 1: you are checked out. The player has to leave the field,
Speaker 1: go and be checked to make sure that the player
Speaker 1: is all right before they can return to play. So
Speaker 1: the hope is that that will end up detecting any
Speaker 1: early issues, so a player can be taken off and
Speaker 1: put on the injured roster until they're able to recover
Speaker 1: and then return to play. Because again, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a concussion is something if it's not really really severe,
Speaker 1: it's something you can recover from with enough rest. But
Speaker 1: if you don't have that rest, then you're just going
Speaker 1: to aggravate that injury and possibly turn it into something
Speaker 1: far more serious. Uh, not that a concussion isn't serious
Speaker 1: already it is, but anyway, so that that's the other
Speaker 1: element of sensors in uh in actual football uniforms that
Speaker 1: are meant to help the safety of the players. But
Speaker 1: it's not the only place where we're seeing sensors. Will
Speaker 1: get to some other elements a little bit later, and
Speaker 1: it gets kind of, I don't know, a little half
Speaker 1: half awesome and half kind of creepy. But but between that,
Speaker 1: I have another great story about a training system that
Speaker 1: is meant to help take some of the wear and
Speaker 1: tear off football players by reducing the physical um toil
Speaker 1: of training. You guys might not be aware of this,
Speaker 1: but football players have to practice a lot. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go by this one field. The train ride I
Speaker 1: take goes by this one field, and I see football
Speaker 1: players drilling on that field every day from late summer
Speaker 1: all the way through fall, and they run plays over
Speaker 1: and over. You know, they're they're they're making sure that
Speaker 1: their agility and their physical skills are as high as
Speaker 1: they can as they can make them, as they can
Speaker 1: train them. But they're also running specific plays to see
Speaker 1: what plays work in different situations. So quarterbacks have access
Speaker 1: to a playbook. That playbook has all the different potential
Speaker 1: plays they have practiced that everyone on the team knows,
Speaker 1: so they can work together and coordinate to give the
Speaker 1: best performance they can. But these plays are sometimes that
Speaker 1: you have to make adjustments depending upon how the defense
Speaker 1: lines up, so that if you have planned this particular
Speaker 1: play and you all get information and then you notice
Speaker 1: that the defense is really empathetical to what you had planned,
Speaker 1: you have to start coming up with a new new
Speaker 1: plan on the fly. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: uh that that might be helping players in the future
Speaker 1: is something called the Axon system A X O N.
Speaker 1: So instead of running the same physical play dozens or
Speaker 1: hundreds of times so that you can learn all the
Speaker 1: different variations in the best way to make a decision.
Speaker 1: It all is a system that that kind of simulates
Speaker 1: the picking of a play and how it plays out,
Speaker 1: so that quarterbacks get used to making snap decisions in
Speaker 1: decreasing amounts of time. So when it first starts a quarterback,
Speaker 1: who's and it actually can be used for any position
Speaker 1: on the field, but quarterbacks are what they tested it on.
Speaker 1: Quarterback will start a play and then the conditions will
Speaker 1: be such that they have to decide who would they
Speaker 1: throw to in this situation? Right who? Who is the
Speaker 1: person most likely to be able to catch based upon
Speaker 1: coverage all that kind of thing, and then they have
Speaker 1: to make that decision. Uh. And then the time for
Speaker 1: them to make the decision decreases as they do well
Speaker 1: in this game, and that allows them to train their
Speaker 1: ability to make fast, accurate decisions, which is all part
Speaker 1: of football. Right. So it starts to get to a
Speaker 1: point where the amount of time you would have would
Speaker 1: be about the same as the point where you would
Speaker 1: break from a huddle to where you're lined up at
Speaker 1: the line of scrimmage, and then you have to commit. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the ideas that originally this system was meant for
Speaker 1: people who were recovering from something like a concussion. It
Speaker 1: was a way to help train their minds to get
Speaker 1: back on focus and to to kind of get an
Speaker 1: idea of how they were performing before putting them back
Speaker 1: in play. But now it's also being used as a
Speaker 1: way of actually training football players so that they take
Speaker 1: some of that physical training and they convert it to
Speaker 1: mental training so that you don't have to have this
Speaker 1: incredible physical toll on the players during the training season.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they still need to do it right, right,
Speaker 1: I assume that being you know, in shape is part
Speaker 1: of that. I think. I think having a bunch of
Speaker 1: really really super sharp football players who are all very
Speaker 1: pudgy and slow is not an effective way of winning
Speaker 1: a game either, So but it it would be. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is interesting that they're taking out the some of
Speaker 1: this physical toll because because injuries can happen in training
Speaker 1: as well as in games, so this is a way
Speaker 1: of making sure that you keep your team healthier longer,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, but okay, so
Speaker 1: you said that we still had more to say about, um,
Speaker 1: some of those sensors. Let's get back into that conversation.
Speaker 1: And sensors can do a lot more than detect things
Speaker 1: like injury these days, they could they could be used
Speaker 1: for for data analysis and tracking, right. Yeah, So obviously
Speaker 1: people who are really big into sports, a lot of
Speaker 1: them are also big into statistics, right, tracking everything from
Speaker 1: how a player, how many yards rushed if you're talking
Speaker 1: about football, or if you talking about baseball, number of
Speaker 1: home runs they're batting average, all this kind of stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, sports has always been this really data heavy
Speaker 1: kind of of pursuit or or hobby or entertainment, depending
Speaker 1: upon you know, whatever you're however you're approaching it. Is
Speaker 1: this what that movie Moneyball was all about? Money Ball
Speaker 1: certainly does play a roll into this sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of being able to to look at a
Speaker 1: person's actual performance, relate that into some sort of quantifiable
Speaker 1: uh system, and then use that to have meaningful conversations
Speaker 1: or just show off how much you are able to retain.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're only able to gather so much
Speaker 1: information and usually unless we were to put I don't know,
Speaker 1: sensors in uniforms of like football players, for example, which
Speaker 1: is happening. Um, so you're not relying on just the
Speaker 1: keen eyes of the observers, but you're actually getting a
Speaker 1: mechanically produced data. Yeah. So for example, you know, there's
Speaker 1: certain things that we can look at, especially for like
Speaker 1: a televised game right where we can see exactly how
Speaker 1: far someone ran during a play on a football game,
Speaker 1: but we don't necessarily know how quickly they were moving,
Speaker 1: how much, how how fast is their acceleration, how long
Speaker 1: does it take them to get to their top speed?
Speaker 1: You know, what position were they in at a specific
Speaker 1: point in the play. That kind of analysis takes a
Speaker 1: lot of time and it's hard to do on the fly.
Speaker 1: So if you are a broadcaster and you're trying to
Speaker 1: relay the events of the game to the audience and
Speaker 1: explain what's going on and why the game is unfolding
Speaker 1: the way it is, you know, you're often limited by
Speaker 1: the amount of information that you can have at your disposal. Well,
Speaker 1: that was kind of the idea behind the the NFL
Speaker 1: going in and putting sensors into players outfits, actually into
Speaker 1: their their shoulder pads essentially, so it's uh it's meant
Speaker 1: to uh track their acceleration in particular, but other other
Speaker 1: metrics as well. It is developed by a company called
Speaker 1: Zebra Technologies unless here from the UK and then Zebra
Speaker 1: Technologies UH. They use r f I D enabled sensors.
Speaker 1: They discussed they decided that r F I D was
Speaker 1: the most reliable means of transmitting information rather than some
Speaker 1: other form like bluetooth or whatever. They decided r f
Speaker 1: I D was the way to go, and so UM
Speaker 1: the player players can be tracked like their position can
Speaker 1: be tracked based upon the way that the r F
Speaker 1: I D communicates with various receivers that are set up
Speaker 1: around the stadiums UH that are hardwired to a server,
Speaker 1: and the server collects all the data and makes sense
Speaker 1: of it and can even turn it into visualized data
Speaker 1: very quickly. So you can get something like an arrow
Speaker 1: that shows the acceleration of a player and be able
Speaker 1: to really communicate why a play unfolded the way it did.
Speaker 1: So if you saw a really really effective blitz, for example,
Speaker 1: in football, you could say, well, this guy, this, this
Speaker 1: defensive player was moving at such a speed there was
Speaker 1: no hope for the quarterback to be able to evade it.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing as opposed to saying the quarterback
Speaker 1: delayed in throwing the ball. Because often in the course
Speaker 1: of one of these games, if you don't break down
Speaker 1: the data that way, you make assumptions as to why
Speaker 1: a play unfolded the way it did. This could give
Speaker 1: both the audience and coaches and players valuable information that
Speaker 1: will end up shaping the game in the future. Of course,
Speaker 1: I can see an application of this that ties into
Speaker 1: something we've talked about on this podcast other times, which
Speaker 1: is real time health sensing. Yeah, that's actually the kind
Speaker 1: of the paste on tattoos you've discussed that can you know,
Speaker 1: easily seamlessly go on you and keep track of all
Speaker 1: your heart rate vital functions. The the NFL plans to
Speaker 1: do that in two thousand fifteen. So right now it's
Speaker 1: it's sensors that are meant to track the movement of players,
Speaker 1: but in the future it will also be sensors that
Speaker 1: do things like heart rate, lung capacity, body temperature, which
Speaker 1: could presumably be broadcast to spectators, so spectators could actually see.
Speaker 1: That's a whole another level of fantasy football. Yeah, that's right. Look,
Speaker 1: his heart's not even racing. This guy is a cool customer,
Speaker 1: or this guy is you know, this guy is really
Speaker 1: starting to to sweat it. So wow, he's doing that
Speaker 1: with five mill leaders of urine and his black don't. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be that precise that early, but but
Speaker 1: this is some also something that the coaches may use
Speaker 1: in in future training, for example. Um, whether or not
Speaker 1: it actually gets broadcast to spectators, I don't know. The
Speaker 1: way I was reading it, the report made it sound
Speaker 1: like this would in fact be part of it. I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm a professional athlete, I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want people to know how my body is performing at
Speaker 1: any given time. That's a little creepy. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: fine with I'm fine with my physician and maybe my coach,
Speaker 1: But you know, Bob who's got the cheap seats, knowing
Speaker 1: what my what my heart rate and lung capacity is
Speaker 1: a little weird. Yeah, that's a little bit strange. Um.
Speaker 1: But but the NFL certainly isn't the only organization that
Speaker 1: is looking to this kind of data collection to help
Speaker 1: its players out. Over in the UK, McLaren, the Formula
Speaker 1: one high end sport car company, has a branch called
Speaker 1: McLaren Applied Technologies that design sensor systems to monitor and
Speaker 1: track athletes performance as well, and they've paired up with
Speaker 1: rugby teams, UK Olympic rowers and cyclers and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other kids to help them like micro refine their
Speaker 1: their training in their in game per format and even
Speaker 1: in the design of some of the sports gear, like
Speaker 1: like the bicycle you mentioned. McLaren has done some work
Speaker 1: with designing bikes that they ended up taking into account
Speaker 1: the writer as part of the bicycle in order to
Speaker 1: create high end bicycles that would be used in things
Speaker 1: like the Tour de France and we're talking like super
Speaker 1: expensive gear here. Yeah, yeah, we did a whole episode
Speaker 1: on McLaren over on uh we're on board thinking right
Speaker 1: now over on tech stuff. Um and so if you
Speaker 1: if you'd like to hear a little bit more about that,
Speaker 1: you can check out that episode. Yeah, their company headquarters
Speaker 1: is totally like the place that you think James Bond
Speaker 1: goes to. That's McLaren headquarters. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to know how this high tech data
Speaker 1: collection technology applies to the sport of basses ball. Bass
Speaker 1: Ball one of my favorites. I do enjoy going to
Speaker 1: a basis ball game or baseball as the rest of
Speaker 1: the human race calls it. Uh so baseball. One of
Speaker 1: the systems that's been rolled out Reese Lee. It was
Speaker 1: announced back in two thousand thirteen, I think is that
Speaker 1: a lot of parks have incorporated the I Beacon system.
Speaker 1: Now I Beacon as a proprietary low energy bluetooth system
Speaker 1: that Apple created and low energy bluetooth systems. You can
Speaker 1: think of it as like a network of transmitters that
Speaker 1: can both transmit and receive information, so it can track
Speaker 1: your location by figuring out which one is your closest to,
Speaker 1: so kind of like triangulation. So really you just need
Speaker 1: enough to provide coverage for whatever area you're looking at,
Speaker 1: and that will give you the information you need to
Speaker 1: be able to track person's movements and what they're doing
Speaker 1: within certain areas. So we might see this incorporated into
Speaker 1: shops in the future. In fact, a few places have
Speaker 1: used it now for stadiums for baseball. The way it's
Speaker 1: currently being used, or at least the early implementations are
Speaker 1: largely about things like allowing spectator to upgrade their seat.
Speaker 1: For example, so your ticket might be on your smartphone.
Speaker 1: You come in, you check in, you've tapped into this
Speaker 1: uh this eyebeacon system and the sky box. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get a notification saying hey, for a certain up charge,
Speaker 1: you can move into the sky box and you can
Speaker 1: choose that. Or maybe as you're walking near concessions, it
Speaker 1: gives you a coupon for a specific concession, whatever that
Speaker 1: might be, or maybe it's merchandise like a baseball cap
Speaker 1: or a jersey, that kind of thing. Now, in the future,
Speaker 1: they may also use this to transmit real time data
Speaker 1: about the game to people like so if you have
Speaker 1: the app on your phone, you might get real time
Speaker 1: information about again player stats, which could be incredible for
Speaker 1: people who are into fantasy football and really like to
Speaker 1: micromanage that kind of thing, or maybe that you get
Speaker 1: updates on games that are going on in other stadiums
Speaker 1: so or other parks, so you're which is big in
Speaker 1: playoff season when you're watching your team play and you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: if we win and this other team loses, we go
Speaker 1: to the play offs, than you really want to be
Speaker 1: paying attention to multiple things at the same time. So
Speaker 1: this is a possible future that we'll see where I
Speaker 1: begin will transmit this information. Right now, it looks like
Speaker 1: it's more of a kind of consumer sort of orientation
Speaker 1: where we're using it to you know, just maneuver through
Speaker 1: a park and be able to buy things. So we'll
Speaker 1: see how it gets, how it evolves over time. I
Speaker 1: expect that will eventually see this being more of a
Speaker 1: second screen kind of experience for people who are actually
Speaker 1: at a game. Um, and if you've ever been to
Speaker 1: a baseball game, there are some stretches where you might
Speaker 1: we you know, I might want to look a different,
Speaker 1: might look at something other than an empty but is
Speaker 1: completely not happening at all on the field. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that occasionally does happen. Um, But so I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about like skycam and some
Speaker 1: of the other technologies that are helping home viewers feel
Speaker 1: like they're part of the action in in sports ball. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was curious about what televised football looked like back
Speaker 1: in like nineteen sixty eight, so I looked it up
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Tiny. It's tiny little men running around in
Speaker 1: a tiny place. It looks a little bit like like
Speaker 1: SNS styled football. Yeah, and there were some closer shots.
Speaker 1: I think that there were some maybe cameras on the sidelines,
Speaker 1: but still it's I mean, you're not really getting in
Speaker 1: the action. There's a lot you can't see. Sure. By contrast,
Speaker 1: if you've watched American football in the last a decade
Speaker 1: or so, you've probably noticed this device zipping along on
Speaker 1: wires above the field, and and you've probably seen footage
Speaker 1: from it too. It's it's that is in fact a skycam,
Speaker 1: and it allows for those really dynamics sweeping shots that
Speaker 1: fans of football and of you know, the Olympics and
Speaker 1: NASCAR and Indy car races and basketball and hockey and
Speaker 1: golf and concerts and feature films have all been enjoying
Speaker 1: since it was invented in the early nineteen eighties by
Speaker 1: Garrett Brown, who is the same due who invented the
Speaker 1: steady cam. UM. The rigs are pretty expensive. They're like
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars, so that's why you only
Speaker 1: see them in these kind of larger sports and concerts
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. UM. But but here's how they work,
Speaker 1: because it's it's pretty fascinating and I did not know
Speaker 1: this before. There's a really great article about it on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, which is a plug in fact.
Speaker 1: But so they work like this UM from from four
Speaker 1: high points at corners of the field, usually in like
Speaker 1: stadiums that are already built. That's lightning towers. But it
Speaker 1: can be a constructed rigging if they need to. Uh,
Speaker 1: four reels each containing like thousands of feet of kevlar
Speaker 1: reinforced rope that's coupled with optical fiber cables spin their
Speaker 1: contents out to a to a spar where the four
Speaker 1: cables meet kind of in the center of the field,
Speaker 1: and that's where the camera rig is held. UM. So
Speaker 1: you know, you've you've got computer controls and also a
Speaker 1: pilot and also a camera operator that are all working together.
Speaker 1: To manage this this pulley system of ropes and stuff,
Speaker 1: and uh, all the footge footage from the camera is
Speaker 1: sent back out over those fiber cables, so it can
Speaker 1: it can go out in real time, are very close
Speaker 1: to real time at any rate. Um. And there's there's
Speaker 1: gyroscopic stabilizers that keep all of those camera movements smooth,
Speaker 1: as you might expect from the dude who invented the
Speaker 1: study camp. So it's it's pretty nifty and uh. And
Speaker 1: there's a relatively limited number of cable failures that have
Speaker 1: resulted in the skycam, say plummeting to the earth. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, given that it is so so expensive
Speaker 1: to to set up, there is talk that in maybe
Speaker 1: the near future, drones might be used to get cameras
Speaker 1: around the field. Yeah, I mean it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a similar to which I find even more terrifying, but
Speaker 1: the motion picture industry same sort of thing. The idea
Speaker 1: of being able to get a rane shot without having
Speaker 1: to rent a crane. Uh oh, and also having something
Speaker 1: more stable than most crane shots because and there's also
Speaker 1: I mean there's some places, like in the middle of
Speaker 1: the stadium where you can't really put a crane because
Speaker 1: it would probably be an impediment to play. So this
Speaker 1: would be a way of getting some of those incredible shots. Uh.
Speaker 1: Clearly that sort of thing would require, um so lots
Speaker 1: of tests and to prove that in fact, the system
Speaker 1: was fine and the drone was not going to go
Speaker 1: spiraling off into you know, the cheap seats or something
Speaker 1: that no one could hijack the signal or anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little little important stuff like that. But as for
Speaker 1: something else, like a a kind of technology that is
Speaker 1: uh that is currently being used, that's still pretty pretty
Speaker 1: impressive to me. So this is a list that changes
Speaker 1: all the time. But right now, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: ever bank Field, which is in Florida, has the record
Speaker 1: for the largest stadium screen in UM in American football. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are other larger screens that are out there. The
Speaker 1: screen that EverBank Field has has fifty five thousand feet
Speaker 1: of display area square feet. That sounds like a good
Speaker 1: thing to watch failed public wedding proposals. Yeah, boy, you
Speaker 1: just haven't lived till you've seen kiss Cam at thousand
Speaker 1: square feet. I'd want to play Halo on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stop looking at my screen. I can't help it. It's
Speaker 1: in my full view of visions literally everywhere. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, you know, that's that's one of those technologies
Speaker 1: I expect will continually see get updated, the idea of
Speaker 1: a screen that can show people who are not at that,
Speaker 1: you know, at the the sidelines, being able to get
Speaker 1: a good view of what's happening, because, like you were saying, Joe,
Speaker 1: I mean otherwise, your your experience being actually at the
Speaker 1: game may feel a lot like watching a football game
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. You just see a bunch of
Speaker 1: people running around at a great distance. So it's one
Speaker 1: of those ways of balancing that out and giving a
Speaker 1: better experience to the folks who are there. Well, there's
Speaker 1: tons more information about sports and technology and science that
Speaker 1: are all coming together to kind of shape the way
Speaker 1: the games are are played and how people prepare for them.
Speaker 1: But there's just too much to really cover in a
Speaker 1: single episode. So I'm sure we'll we'll revisit this and
Speaker 1: probably talk about other specific sports in the future, and
Speaker 1: not just primarily football and baseball as we did here.
Speaker 1: So if you guys have any suggestions, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: favorite sport of yours that you really wonder like what's
Speaker 1: the puppy bowl gonna be like in twenty years fishing?
Speaker 1: And it could that could also be a joking, but
Speaker 1: I'm positive that there is that people are working on that.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that we have fish finders. I
Speaker 1: mean that alone, that that wasn't the case when I
Speaker 1: was at informed. It's cheating, so like you need to
Speaker 1: you need to just know in your gut where the
Speaker 1: fish are. Fast. Don't have the Internet, so we shouldn't die. Yeah, now, okay,
Speaker 1: now now I understand, okay, Well, at any rate, if
Speaker 1: you guys out there have any suggestions, because I'm not
Speaker 1: getting any useful ones here dropping a line, you can,
Speaker 1: you can let us know on Twitter or a Google
Speaker 1: Plus with the handle f w thinking. You can go
Speaker 1: over to Facebook put in f w thinking in the
Speaker 1: search bar. That will pull us right up and interact
Speaker 1: with us. Let us know what you like about the show,
Speaker 1: let's know what you want to know about the future,
Speaker 1: and we read all the comments. We look forward to them,
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic in the future of technology, I
Speaker 1: visit forward thinking dot Com, brought you by Toyota. Let's
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