Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday July 16 2017, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the 15-love dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Championships at Wimbledon, which consumes some 28 tons of strawberries, 10,000 litres of cream, and 320,000 glasses of Pimm's per year, is notable for its seemingly unchecked luxuriant hedonism. But while most companies, organisations, and institutions are looking to cut costs, Wimbledon has stuck to its mantra. Don't do things cheaper; do things better.

Case in point: Wimbledon's use of technology is really quite impressive. I've been lucky enough to follow Wimbledon's tech over the last three years, and it has been very encouraging to see a massive endeavour like The Championships dive deeper and deeper into technology. You might think that after 140 years Wimbledon could be stuck in its ways, but far from it. When technology is the only viable way of providing consistent, significant gains for players, visitors, and hundreds of millions of people spectating remotely, you don't try to fight it; you embrace it.

Of course, Wimbledon is embracing tech in a distinctly Wimbledon way. This year, for example, The Championships are trialling free Wi-Fi—but because they don't yet know how people will behave with free Wi-Fi, it's only available in three specific locations (near the food court, in the ticket resale area, and on the west side of court 12). The tournament continues through this weekend, but its team has already started analysing the data. It turns out that, thankfully, the Wi-Fi users on court 12 only use their phones between points. When play begins, Wi-Fi usage stops. If the trial is a success, Wi-Fi could be rolled out across Wimbledon in 2018.

[...] Perhaps most excitingly, Wimbledon is now storing the 3D state of tennis matches via the Hawk-Eye camera system available on some of the courts. Hawk-Eye, which uses multiple cameras to track the ball and resolve line judging disputes, outputs a constant stream of data that IBM can process into a useful format. But actually doing something with that data is a risky affair, because it isn't clear who owns it. Some tennis players, as you can imagine, aren't keen for some wily big data/machine learning software to reveal the secrets of their play style to the world.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday July 16 2017, @04:14PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Sunday July 16 2017, @04:14PM (#539921) Journal

    Shut up, Peter.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2