tv Click BBC News August 18, 2018 3:30pm-4:00pm BST
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this week, it's a look back at click‘s summer of sport. with cars, balls, bikes and bots. we'll start with our trip to f1 from july, which has been at the cutting edge of technology and design since its creation in 1946. welcome to the pit. every year, teams compete fiercely to outdo each other in aerodynamics, data communication and materials, all with one aim — to make their cars go really, really fast. and they do a really good job of making them that,
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as we are finding out here at the austrian grand prix. lewis hamilton's ride. what's even more impressive is that this whole show is permanently on the road, with car, teams, engineers and scientists moving from country to country and track to track. now, these are the most expensive motorhomes i've ever seen. each one of these is a lorry, and theyjust drive them to the next formula 1, stick them together, zip, zip, zip, and that's ferrari's office for the length of the race. mercedes are the current world champions, and like every other team here, they spend millions on their car and developing the technology that will hopefully win them the race. but what you see at any grand prix is just the tip of the iceberg. it takes hundreds of people to develop that technology. so we sent lara lewington to mercedes hq to find out what really goes
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into winning a race. away from the track, the people, the preparation, planning, and the precision are pivotal. hi, i'm lara lewington from the bbc. hello. can ijust put security stickers on your phone? of course, no problem. so we're allowed to film here but i mustn't take any pictures on my phone. there's clearly a lot at stake here, so it's no surprise that formula 1 is notoriously secretive. but today, we've got some behind—the—scenes access. this business is big bucks and millimetres and milliseconds matter. this is last year's winning car. in fact, it hasn't even been cleaned since its last race in abu dhabi. but the thing that is most striking standing here next to it is the amount of detail
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there is everywhere throughout the car and, after each race, if there's something they're not happy with, it can be perfected. well, this was a winning car last year so clearly it's been very successful, but you're obviously not happy with it because you're working on a new one. so what do you think needs to be improved? we're never happy with it, as you say. this is lewis's car from last year. it was the first car we made on the back of a really big regulation change. we worked really hard on all those little small bits you see around the car, which are all the aerodynamic bits and pieces. it seems to be made up of lots of little small bits. yeah, every little bit has a job and we put it into the wind tunnel and each one is about optimising the airflow around the car. but we are not happy with it here because we focused so much on that, we now need to do a lot on the packaging internally to make it much tighter. the tighter you get it, again, the better you can get the aerodynamics around the car. the operation here goes way beyond the car itself, though. welcome to the race support room.
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when a race is actually on, 60 members of the team are allowed to be at the track, so this provides the opportunity for more people to be looking at the data and making sure that vital advice can be provided. now, on these screens, they'll be looking at a feed from the race. they'll also be looking at feeds from within the drivers‘ cars, plus all the vital data that they want to act on, and if they want to communicate, well, they simply do it through a pair of these. lap times, gps data, everything can be tracked and analysed here, where 5,000 different data points are being assessed. information from races in europe taking just 0.1 of a second to reach here, or 0.4 if the data is coming from australia. meanwhile, this lot are busy practising at speed. over 250 of these trials take place ahead of the season. they make it look easy, but inevitably it's not, as i can tell you firsthand. 0h!
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oh, no! it's meant to be so quick, but i clearly wasn't. meanwhile, spencer's already living life in the fast lane. thank you, lara. and by the way, this is how you really do it. he laughs. this year, mercedes has got its pit stop down to an incredible 1.85 seconds. now that's quicker than it takes to say 1.85 seconds. it's a finely tuned operation that the engineers practise over and over in the days before each race. it's a bit of a ballet and the ergonomics is quite important because it's 20—odd people
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around the car, trying to do a job in two seconds. and it's — if you start banging into people, then you're losing half a second, a second, and then the strategists can't get their numbers right and then you don't get the position you need. the human element to this ultrafast manoeuvre is accompanied by technology, individually developed by each team. even the hydraulically powered wheel guns are a closely guarded secret. and i hear they're quite expensive. they are expensive and they have a life because they're under an awful lot of pressure, so we are changing the internals a great deal. do i hear about £30,000 each? i wouldn't know the exact cost, but that sounds quite low to me. right, we're going into mercedes‘ garage now. keeping the pit crew safe is of utmost importance. these lights, for example, let the crew know if the cars have become electrified, stopping them from getting more than a nasty shock. and then there's what goes into the cars, or more specifically,
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what comes out of the cars, which is monitored by trackside labs and high—end scientific equipment. between every session, the cars are given the equivalent of a blood test. the oil and the fuel is taken to see if it's contaminated, and that might give you a clue as to the state of the engine, and that is done in the fuel lab. the oil is put into a spectrometer, which tests for different metals in the fluid. the amount of a specific metal present can reveal if a particular part of the engine is degrading too quickly. and next in our summer of sport special, we are going from formula 1 to the world cup. that is in a couple of ticks. hello and welcome to the week in tech. this is the week that facebook signed an exclusive deal with la liga to show every game for three seasons, in several countries,
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including india and pakistan. and a group of ten current and former tinder staff are suing the company for $2 billion, accusing them of undervaluing the dating app and cheating them out of company stock. the company has called the claims meritless. and while last week conspiracy theorist alexjones may have avoided a total twitter ban, he has been banned from posting for a week. the host of info wars will not be able to interact with anyone during the suspension but his previous tweets will be visible. it was also the first time a birth control app was authorised by the food and drug administration in america. natural cycles, which is currently under investigation in sweden due to alleged misleading claims over its accuracy, was given the all clear to market itself as a contraceptive in america. and a study by moorfields eye hospital and google's deepmind showed that al can diagnose eye disease as accurately as experts. trained on thousands of scans, it is hoped that it will be able
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to flag and refer urgent cases and ease the burden on clinicians. and finally, i leave you with the disembodied head of thomas the tank engine with a 3d printed body programmed to sing karaoke. music: never gonna give you up. and next up in our celebration of sports, jen gets her boots on. he may not look like much, but robokeeper can stop manchester's best players. his two cameras take up to 90 photos per second. if a football is kicked up to 100 kilometres an hour, that leaves robokeeperjust 0.3 seconds to save the ball. there are some great
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facilities in manchester, as you might expect from one of the world's great footballing cities. normally practice requires a pitch, players to set up the drills, and footballs. but what if you could bring all of this into your living room? we have come to salford city football ground to be put through our paces with the latest in virtual reality. first collecting data with statsports — they are working at the world cup with eight national teams including england. using a heart rate monitor and a gps device fixed between our shoulder blades, we are sent on a run to collect data points. virtual reality platform mi hiepa sports transforms this data into vr amazingly quickly. that position that you were running, we have offset it back onto the pitch, so as we move forward, if we stream that data live from the gps vest we will be able to stream it live into this platform.
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so theoretically if you run in at half—time or during the world cup, you will be able to review live tactics, positions, so this is the future of connecting those dots. mi hiepa have also created pressure drills in vr. level 1. lucy staniforth is shortlisted for the women's fa goal of the year. smashed it! the game realism is spot on, the defenders close on me, i felt real pressure. even just fine tuning little skills, some of my touches went outside the box, even the competitive edge in working on that was all good. another incredible development is being able to put yourself in any position in any game. 0bviously where raheem is, given
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that he is a fast player anyway, he has the advantage coming in, the defender would have to turn their hips and try and clear it that way, i suppose. lucy is watching a real match that took place between man city and monaco. she can place herself in any position on the pitch — in the stands, on the roof, and even become the manager. right now i have a clear view of what went wrong in terms of the left back‘s positioning. do you see more detail of the players and their bodies from this, rather than watching back on the match video? yeah, i think so, because you are on their level and there is so much value in actually appreciating the picture they saw. so for the first time this is all portable. you can bring the match analysis loaded on an sd card or usb stick, load it onto the headset, put it in your bag and bring it with you, so if you are in the hotel the night before you can review the opponent's tactics
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from anywhere on the pitch. but to play against their virtual goalkeeper you have to be back on the wired version. vr, especially in contact sports, it takes out any chance of injury and it is more controllable and the fatigue level can be lower. i think it is really cutting edge, and we are glad to be getting involved in that space. you did quite well. nice one, jen, and at this year's world cup finals in russia, data played a bigger role than ever. before the tournament, paul carter went to fifa to find out how. like it or not, data is an integral part of football.
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you cannot watch a game without being bombarded by all kinds of statistics. for the first time, fifa are providing an all—in—one technical package, allowing coaching staff and analysts to communicate throughout matches in real—time. the snappily titled electronic performance and tracking system — or epts — will provide data on player metrics such as distances run, speed and positional information. crucially, each of the 32 countries competing in the tournament will be provided with two tablets. one for a data analyst in the stands, who will be to communicate with the second device user on the bench — possibly a coach or an assistant manager. we are using an optical tracking system so that we have optical tracking cameras in all of the stadiums. we know where the players and the ball are at any time of the match. we have different metrics available to the analysts, and is up to them to
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decide how to use it. with resources available for technology differing between countries, fifa hopes this technology will bridge the data divide, bringing the digital haves closer to the digital have—nots. lots of the team already use data. we expect a lot of teams coming to russia to bring their own set up. but we want to at least offer the same to all of the teams. in fifa's system, the team's data analysts will have access to a tactical app enabling them to add drawings over a live video feed. stills can then be sent to the dugout. with goalline technology, video assistant referees and now epts, this year's world cup looks set to be the most technologically advanced ever. but with all this technology, how big is the risk that we lose the real spirit of the game? the role of the data analyst is simply to support those coaching decisions.
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i think there are some key insights which can be found in the data, but football will always be those 22 players on the pitch and the coach is always going to be the person who makes the decisions. at the end, what technology is really for is only to support. at the end, that is, you know, i am a big football fan and you are a big football fan, it is about the 22 players plus the referee, 90 minutes. a penalty shootout, germany versus england, maybe. that is the excitement. i think technology can only add additional help, optimise processes and optimise ways of providing information. that is what technology is about. that was paul at fifa. data has also massively transformed the sport of cycling. but the epic proportions of the tour de france make collecting data from the riders a lot more difficult than it would be in the velodrome. cat hawkins went to find out how one
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of the oldest sporting competitions this year's tour de france is taking place against the same beautiful french mountains as always, but there is a big difference this year. technology and data is playing more of a role than ever before. cycling is becoming increasingly data driven, and for good reason. masses of data can be collected, and in a sport of fine margins and superhuman endurance, those insights are the key to energy efficiency, strategy and gains. we look at many things. we look at heartrate, we look at data, their maximum power and elevation gain. we look at that and we see how the riders are building and we look into that data to try to make them better and stronger in stage races. but how is the data collected and transmitted ?
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that is where these little devices come in. it may not look like much, but this small clip—on device is on the back of every bike taking part in the tour de france this year. it has actually been revolutionary. the sensors on the bikes send real—time location data to a nearby vehicle which then beams up to a following helicopter. it is then sent to the data truck for real—time analytics. this is where the magic happens, from bike to motorbike to helicopter to here. this is where all the data for the tour de france is being stored. the data truck is where data is analysed, enriched and visualised for broadcasters and teams. there is even enough data for machine learning algorithms to get to work. the depth of data analytics produced from simply a gps device is staggering. contextual data such as 3—d maps, weather, gradient and rider information is also added to bring the data to life. during the race, riders wear earpieces, and following close behind them is the data car,
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where the team analyst is dissecting the data and feeding them live information. as to what happens in here, it is quite an important place, isn't it? imagine if you have a comms office and you try to fire a rocket to the moon, and i just feel like we are that place at nasa where all the details come in. and they come in from all directions. and then we send out one message to the riders. hundreds of data sets are analysed, from competitor tactics to live course conditions. we analyse all of the climbs, the gradients, the road surfaces, the width of roads. any road furniture, anything coming around a blind corner and there is a pedestrian crossing. all these kinds of things, we try to find. 0n the tour de france, with restrictions on sponsorship deals, we don't get any heartrate or power data, but we do get location, which is absolutely crucial because we can make decisions much, much quicker. so we are in the race. this is happening live. what are we saying to the riders?
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we are saying, "come on, serge, you've got 250 more metres hard. "around the next corner, hairpin, you can't see it but it "flatte ns for 250 metres. "you'll get some respite and will get drinks in 400 metres, cool down, "take your drinks and 10k to the finish." nice. i can automatically see the psychological impact of that is huge. but how do the cyclists themselves feel about data in sport? having everything about you measured and tracked can have its downsides. of course, a lot of teams are trying to keep it secret, because, yes, when you are racing to win the tour de france you don't really want to give your competitors that advantage. people say it is now just turning into f1, it is just robots talking to robots. what do you say to those people? it is more than that. a robot doesn't have to put the effort in. biometric data isn't actually transmitted live. but that isn't because of technical limitations. the data ownership between
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the rider, the teams, the race owners, it is still quite complex, and so at the moment the data we do have permission to collect and publish is positioning data that we can then tell stories about speed, gradient and positioning. it is possible to take biometric data, and we have piloted that at the tour of california a couple of years ago, and in a stadium environment. but for the teams it is sensitive because that biometric data also gives great competitive insight about how hard that rider is working to perform the way they are. as well as sponsoring their own team, dimension data is the technology company behind all the data collected for the tour de france. their technology has managed to overcome problems unique to this epic race. we have been studying this tracking system for 15, 20 years. the big thing we have to deal with is, we are in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the mountains, the weather conditions can be horrific sometimes. so this is the main thing,
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logistically speaking, to be able to install the tracker and give information in real time. that is the most complicated thing. from data centre to road race, there are 20 kilometres to go, 20 kilometre wind speeds. the final is coming up. and from kat in the saddle to me in court. in the run—up to wimbledon, ifound myself in boston with a little robot ball collector. the tennibot autonomously patrols the court and collects the balls that you've lobbed, smashed or in my case mis—hit. any ballboys or ball girls out there who are worried about their jobs, don't worry, this isn't designed to replace you at the tournament.
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this is more for people who want to practise and are not good and end up with a lot of balls in the net. so you can carry on practising and the tennibot willjust go around picking up the balls while you are busy being rubbish. its on—board camera spots the balls and its partner at the net helps to keep track of things as well. it also has a handy detachable basket so you can easily return your balls, if you have to. then you can retire to your air—conditioned car, ball collecting bucket and wheels in tow, and nobody will ever suspect that you are the laziest tennis player alive. and that is it for this week. next week we have another chance to see our sustainability special from earlier in the year, when we will be talking gravity trains, hurricanes and coral reefs. in the meantime, you can follow us on facebook and twitter. from tennibot and me, see you soon. 0n
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on balance today looking like the better of the two days this weekend but it does come with fairly mixed fortunes. this grey scene was sent in bya fortunes. this grey scene was sent in by a weather watcher earlier. there has been some brightness, the best of those breaks in central and eastern parts of england and eastern scotland. this photo is certainly brighter but still cloudy. as we go through this evening at, overnight and tomorrow, we have an area of low pressure working in from the west. you can see here that is pushing its way east as we move through tonight
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and tomorrow. it will bring a spell of persistent and heavy rain and it will be breezy as well. through this evening, we see outbreaks of rain pushing into northern ireland, working into southern and central scotland, northern england and northern parts of wales through the night. to the north of that, there will be clear spells, perhaps eight few patches of mr developing and clear skies will allow the temperatures to fall away into single figures. further south though, it will be a fairly humid, muqqy though, it will be a fairly humid, muggy night. temperatures between 13 and 17 celsius. tomorrow we will see sunny spells for the far north of scotland, one or two showers possible. that rain works its way east. and improving picture gradually getting better through the afternoon. across much of england and wales, there will be a good deal of cloud which will thin and break to allow some sunny spells. they could be the odd spot of rain or drizzle, particularly in the west. temperatures around 23 celsius. for the cricket tomorrow, it looks like an improving picture. there is a
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chance of outbreaks of rain and drizzle and some cloud around. as we go from sunday into monday we will see low go from sunday into monday we will see low pressure go from sunday into monday we will see low pressure working its way out towards the east. we have this weather front grazing the east of scotland. that will bring patchy outbreaks of rain. for monday, it looks like there will be fair amount of cloud around. chances of seeing outbreaks of rain and drizzle in the north and west of cotton, western parts of wales and the south—west of england. there will be brighter intervals at times. temperatures and little higher in the south—east. a good deal of dry weather as we move into tuesday. later in the day we will see some rain pushing into the north and west. ambridge is around 25 celsius in the south—east. turning fresh from as we go through wednesday. this is bbc news. the headlines at apm: former united nations secretary general kofi annan dies aged 80, after a short illness. theresa may says he made the world a better place. leadership is not
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about the individual. when you have macho leaders, who believe they have to shine and it all has to be about them, forgetting that what is interest, what is required, is the welfare of society and the people they serve. 300,000 people are made homeless and a major rescue operation is under way in southern india, as the area faces its worst monsoon rains in a century. right now, where i'm standing here, the water level was not there, but now it has come ‘til my ankles. so, gradually, the water level is rising and this is the cause of concern for the authorities, who want to evacuate all these people as soon as possible. and the number is in thousands, they say.
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