The pandemic has not stopped the inertia of technological innovation that is seen every four years in the Olympic Games, much less in an edition held in Japan. This time, the trailer refers to teleportation, a reality made possible by the company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT).
“We believe in the ability of technology to elevate the experience of watching sports”, says the slogan of Kirari, an ultra communication technology that allows transporting the transmission of an event to another venue through high quality images.
Given the lack of local and foreign public in Tokyo 2020, the giant company NTT decided to undertake this technology, although at the moment it is only a test and only during the discipline of badminton. Thanks to the quality of its transmission, it allows fans in another location to see the event as if it were in real time.
Kirari, which is a hologram-based technology, has even been tested at SXSW in Austin to show the potential of merging in-person and remote artists in a single performance. This is an event that brings together film and music events and conferences.
In addition to this innovation, NTT is experimenting with fiber optic technology to deliver live cheers, cheers and shouts to athletes. Although this element has already been experienced locally with table tennis, it has not yet been approved for the Olympic Games, as it would mean that several people have to congregate in public places and that is not yet possible due to sanitary measures in Japan.
With these remote cheers, NTT hopes to eventually be able to use 5G or 6G cellular networks to provide a similar experience without the need for a fixed fiber optic connection and thus support athletes from various points despite long distances.
But not all of NTT’s work focused on transporting experiences over long distances. In a project with the Intel brand, it aimed to improve the viewing experience for fans at the browsing venue.
The companies have installed a 50-meter-wide 12K monitor at the water’s edge so that those on land can watch the race without having to use binoculars. The images are stitched together from moving images captured from three ships and a drone; In addition, they installed a separate and smaller 12K screen in the main press center to allow the media to also see the action of the navigation without having to go to the place.
However, Shingo Kinoshita, an executive engineer at NTT, clarified that while the technology for both remote experiences is fully developed today, making it cost-effective will take some time. In this way, the Olympic experience will be able to bring together more fans in each edition, from different places and not only in badminton.
