Welcome to The Tech Race.
Where do we look?
Why are there things we miss?
How does an athlete's peripheral vision
match up to their competition?
(PRECISION, PERFORMANCE, POWER, DATA, TRAINING, SPEED)
(ENDURANCE, GADGET, BADMINTON EYE-TRACKING SYSTEM)
Technology allows us to track and measure eye activity.
The results of eye-tracking can be amazing,
directly affecting performance,
especially for disciplines that require high-precision
reactions from the athletes, such as badminton.
Although eye movement may seem a small part...
it certainly contributes a lot
to winning games.
(REPUBLIC OF KOREA)
(SEOUL)
The Korean Institute of Sport Science in Seoul
is specialised in analysing the visual habits
and abilities of badminton players,
using tracking technology that gives
a deeper look into the eye,
recording eye movement and pupil diameter.
(HUMANS HAVE A VISUAL FIELD OF ABOUT 120 DEGREES)
With this device, the computer follows a user's eye movements
and follows what they focus on.
The device has a camera which records what users see.
Combining the two, the computer traces where users look.
Line of sight can be trained.
The objective of the training sessions
at the Institute of Sport Science
are to detect the most effective eye movement
for every athlete,
as well as to correct athletes' habits
in order to improve their performance.
Eye-tracking allows us to predict
opponents' movements and be prepared for them.
(CAROLINA MARIN (ESP) TOOK HOME THE GOLD MEDAL
IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES RIO 2016)
With the shuttlecock travelling at up to 400km/h,
badminton requires extremely fast reflexes.
The racket sport has been in the Games since Barcelona 1992.
Men and women compete in individual and double events,
as well as in mixed doubles.
Before the-eye tracking system, I was unaware of my weaknesses
and looked at just one point when I hit the shuttlecock.
With this invention, I analysed my bad habits
and was able to achieve better visual sights,
which improved my performance.
I wore glasses for the eye-tracking analysis
and I enjoyed seeing what my eyes saw on the screen.
It showed me where my eyes were focusing,
and I could tell where to focus for the next time.
Human eye movements are divided into fixations
and saccades.
Fixations occur when we look at a given point,
while saccades are the movements of the eye
between fixation points.
A saccade normally takes 30 to 80 milliseconds,
and during that short time,
our eye is unable to receive any information.
It is the brain which turns frames into a complete picture.
This technology originates from the technology used
by disabled people to move their mouse.
They use their eye movements to manipulate the screen.
In sport, eye-tracking plays a role in talent recognition,
by measuring athletes' innate attentional focus
and projectory estimation skills.
Gaze videos from training sessions
can reveal an athlete's search strategies
or, more importantly, a lack thereof.
(THE TECH RACE)