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Part 4 of America’s Cup Tech Talk: Oceans of Data

In this post, I cover the data science which went into the analysis  of mountains of data before, during and after the America’s Cup races. Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In Part 1, I wrote about the design thinking and material science which has gone into the AC yachts. In Part 2, I discussed the extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews. In Part 3 I covered the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world.

Spurred by Moneyball, every sport is seeing an explosion of data – injury analytics, fan analytics and stadium revenue analytics among others. ESPN and other networks have come up with new metrics and acronyms like WAR in baseball that fans have embraced. MIT hosts an annual Sloan Sports Analytics conference. Even benchmarked against the data gathered over decades in other sports, I would venture to say the data collected and analyzed during the AC was an order of magnitude greater.

The USA team said they collected as many as 40,000 data points per second. That could amount to 500 gb of data from each practice run. Much of that came from sensors like the MEMS which measure aerodynamic pressure at 400 points on the sails, the monitoring harnesses on the crew members and the video from the on-board cameras and those on chase boats and drones. They used Oracle Exadata and Oracle R Advanced Analytics among other technologies to crunch and process the data.

Some of the data applications included:

Design and adjustment of the yacht – There was simulation through virtual wind tunnels and towing tanks using computational fluid mechanics. That required solving among others, Navier-Stokes equations which describe flow patterns in various liquids. Data from each run was also used to make adjustments to the yacht as the video below describes

Weather mapping – In the lead up to the AC finals, the teams had collected over months, millions of weather data points in and around Bermuda’s Great Sound. This is far more granular data than anything meteorology agencies track.

Crew monitoring – sensors captured heart rate, perspiration, lactic acid levels, wattage the grinders were generating and other data to help them fine tune their diets and techniques.

Race playbooks – while each team was coy about the tools and data available to the crew during the races, most had tactical tools like the Land Rover BAR team’s in video below

Broadcast – The largest data volumes came from hours of raw video feeds from helicopters, drones, chase boats and on-board cameras and the data for the LiveLine augmented reality superimposed on the frame. The photo below shows the multiple feeds into the Ross Mobile Productions’s Future is Now 5 (FIN5) production van (they supported the NBC coverage of the races). We only got to see one at a time on our TVs or mobile devices.

Drowning in data would be an appropriate metaphor for the AC. But that would be grossly unfair to the teams which used the data to literally fly in and out of the water. And exposed a new generation of fans to metrics like velocity made good.

Part 3 of America’s Cup Tech Talk: Busting broadcast boundaries

Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races at America’s Cup last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In Part 1, I wrote about the design thinking and material science which has gone into the AC yachts. In Part 2, I discussed the extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews. Here I cover the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world. Next I will cover the data science which went into the analysis  of mountains of data before, during and after the races.

We had great seats near the finish line of the races and Oracle offered us an opportunity to get on a spectator boat on the perimeter. Honestly, though the best views were on the big screen TV and on my iPad. America’s Cup has made considerable progress in moving to stadium type viewing, and Bermuda’s Great Sound was a fantastic setting, but even with high resolution cameras and binoculars it is tough to keep up with a race in a “stadium” which covers roughly 8 square miles (image below courtesy The Telegraph of London)

While TV covers bicycling events like Tour de France over longer distances, covering AC over water and where the yachts zig and zag frequently poses a unique challenge. Sailing added a few million fans worldwide with Team USA’s unbelievable comeback in AC34 in San Francisco in 2013. And with the two teams competing again this time and revenge thick in the air, the interest in the broadcast was even higher, and you could see early signs of how sponsors will get their logos on many of the frames.

What makes AC viewing on TV particularly enjoyable is the LiveLine augmented reality on the screen. Wind speed, yacht speed, number of tacks and gybes completed on a leg by each competitor, “wattage” generated by the grinders and cyclists, and their heart rates superimposed made the broadcast so much more enjoyable. Accurate to an inch, and updated several times a minute, it has also made the race refereeing much more accurate.  

Credit for the AR goes to Stan Honey, an accomplished navigator, but better known in sports TV circles for inventing technology which makes hockey pucks glow, the first down line in the NFL show as yellow and for the real time “player cards" in international soccer.

Most of the coverage was from 2 helicopters that hovered the course, supplemented with footage from a drone, chase boats and cameras aboard the competing yachts.

In this AC, it was also impressive to see the progress drones have made, contributing to the broadcast, but even more importantly in helping competing teams get plenty of video coverage during their practices.  Here is a video of how the Softbank Japan team benefited.

 

In New Zealand, an American, Nick Bowers is being hailed as a hero for helping their team win the AC with his sailing drone video expertise. It was fairly hush-hush for competitive reasons, but today drone battery life is also a constraint while streaming high-quality video over long distances at high speeds. Today, they last less than 10 minutes before needing to return to be recharged. Their role should be much more impactful in the next AC.

The day after the AC ended I met the pilot of one of the helicopters which provided the live footage.

The Cineflex V14HD, gyro stabilized aerial camera and other gear had been shipped off and the helicopter itself was waiting to be put in a container and shipped back from Bermuda.

It hit me the event had been live televised to millions of fans around the world from a remote island in the middle of an ocean. They had to ship all kinds of equipment to make the telecast possible.

Made me go wow. We have come a long, long way since Thomas Edison first filmed the 1899 AC!

Part 2 of America’s Cup Tech Talk: The superhuman crew

Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races at America’s Cup last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In Part 1, I wrote about the design thinking and material science which has gone into the AC yachts. Here I will talk about extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews. Next I will cover the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world and the data science which went into the analysis  of mountains of data before, during and after the races.

A commentator said in the past the work to rest ratio of crews in AC races used to be 6:1. Now it is 1:6. He was not kidding. The crew size this time was down to 6 (with a maximum allowed weight of 1157 lbs) and they were on the go all the time during each race. That was especially true of the grinders who operate the manual winches (or cyclists on the NZ team). They are the “watt generators” who produce the energy to propel the boat (in addition to the wind that powers the sails). The video below shows Louis Sinclair, one the US team’s grinders in a near-death practice session. Now trying doing that at least three times a week.

These are some of the most elite athletes in the world who can generate 1,200 watts of power during a 25 minute race. Team New Zealand, for example, had Simon van Velthooven, an Olympic, Commonwealth Games and world championship medalist, as a key player in its focus on pedal-power. He is nicknamed “Rhino” for his incredible lower body strength.

If you watched the races on TV or your iPad you periodically saw their incredibly hard working heart rates.

The US team wore Medtronic monitoring devices. Not just power exercises, the crew needed lower body exercises and yoga to keep nimble to balance and run across the trampoline of the sailboat going up to 50 knots an hour!

The US team also worked with professional freedivers, learning techniques to hold their breath for up to four minutes under water. That can come in very handy to allow a paramedic in a chase boat to arrive in case of an accident on the boat. They also worked with Navy Seals to push the sailors to near exhaustion (on race days they consume over 7,000 calories) and then test their mental faculties. Mental alertness is critical in a sport where split-second decisions can win or lose a race.

Of course it is not just about strength. Each team has roles such as helmsman, trimmer and tactician who actually sail the boat – make the tacking, trimming and other decisions every second. And when they are not racing, they have other assignments such as rigging or recon of competing teams.

The gear for the crew members is designed for waterproof, windproof protection at 50 knots in Gore-Tex membrane, an extremely thin layer of expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) with over 9 billion pores per square inch.

Crash helmets are not just for safety but also turning into a branding opportunity. Aldo Drudi, the renowned motorcycle gear designer designed the New Zealand team sailing helmets.

 

Their floatation vests come with automatic homing beacon, a personal spare air tank and knives for cutting nets if they get trapped underwater.

The tag of #beastmode is especially appropriate for these superhuman athletes.I enjoyed listening to a couple of the US team members talk about their routines – and especially delighted they autographed my badge.

Part 1 of America’s Cup Tech Talk: The incredible machines

Imagine if baseball pitchers could routinely throw fastballs at 150mph. Imagine if sprinters could routinely break the 3 minute mile. And imagine if such advances were possible within the next few years.

That is the kind of dramatic improvement the sailing world has seen over the last decade especially in the America's Cup races. The top speed has literally tripled and that has required new forms of armor for crew members. But it is not just speed, there are all kinds of rules to keep in mind similar to that in football with penalties (which negate the speed advantage) for false starts, encroachment and out of bounds. And pages upon pages of design guidelines for the size and shape of the sailing vessels, limitations on their weights and many other arcane rules apply. The photo shows a penalty for a start a split-second too early.  Machine referees made the decision.

Oracle invited me and a few other analysts to witness a few races last weekend in Bermuda. It is a vendor of many of the technologies used by the USA team. In this blog I write about the design thinking and material science which has gone into these yachts. Next I will talk extreme athletic conditioning and performance of the crews, the broadcast technology which brought the races to millions of fans around the world and the data science which went into the analysis  of mountains of data before, during and after the races

The yachts in Bermuda followed this template with customizations like Team New Zealand used bicyclists instead of grinders and had a very different split of responsibilities across the 6 member crew compared to the other teams (click on image to enlarge)

Designing them brought in software like that of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. These yachts used rigid wing sails unlike the cloth sails of old. Just as planes use wings parallel to the ground to create upward lift, perpendicular sails create forward motion in the water. This required expertise from the likes of Airbus, which brought some of the latest thinking that has gone into its new A350 around aerodynamics, material science and load calculations.

The wing sail (and the smaller jib) are made of light but sturdy carbon fiber and covered in a shrink-wrapped film of Clysar, with flaps adjustable for different wind conditions. Hidden inside are hydraulics that allow the wing trimmer to operate the flaps and to twist the structure to improve performance. Compared to the sails on the AC72 yachts used in the last Cup four years ago, the drag is down by almost a half and can produce almost twice as much power. The video below shows the 3Di technology used in precision manufacturing of the film.

 

The two hulls have honeycombs made of aluminum and DuPont aerospace grade Nomex paper - again designed to be sturdy but light. The mesh trampoline allows the crew to switch sides during tacks and gybes. The steering wheel the helmsman used to control the foils and rudders comes from automotive expertise. BMW Motorsport engineers helped create the bespoke wheel for the Oracle team with two twist grips and a variety of sensors and electronics embedded in the wheel. Team New Zealand used a joystick instead for some of their maneuvers.

Even a super-efficient sail can only do so much to offset water resistance. So these boats are designed to fly. At sea level, air is almost 800 times less dense than water. Foils, controlled via dagger boards, lift the hulls into the air, dramatically reducing drag and allowing for 15 to 20% improvement in speed. As Nick Holroyd of the Softbank Team Japan said "the holy grail is to have your boat do a complete lap of the course without ever touching down". Even while tacking. The foils are designed to lift the 3 tons of crew and boat into the air. At only about the size of a surfboard these foils do some incredibly heavy lifting. And each team was only allowed to bring 2 pairs so they had to be durable. The photo below shows the “FlyTime” in a race the US team lost.

Unlike planes, however, the fuel for take off comes from human generated hydraulics. Incredibly fit grinders (and cyclists in case of the New Zealand team) generate the propulsion. In a tech talk session, an Oracle team member called it their "oil". The most efficient use of the oil and its storage in accumulators on the boat make a huge difference. Enter companies like Parker Hannifin a leading provider of motion and control technologies in the aerospace sector. From pitch control for the daggerboards to wing control, the Parker systems allow the USA crew to fine tune how the boats perform.

Controlled chaos. Good way to describe life on these incredible machines. No wonder the USA helmsman, Jimmy Spithill got a pilot’s license to help him learn to manage the chaos.

The Stratolaunch

Called Stratolaunch, the plane has some impressive stats: a wingspan of 385 feet, or longer than a football field, and a height of 50 feet. Unfueled, it weighs 500,000 pounds. But it can carry 250,000 pounds of fuel, and its total weight can reach 1.3 million pounds.

But, really ... how big is it? It’s so big that it has 28 wheels and six 747 jet engines. It’s so big that it has 60 miles of wire coursing through it. It’s so big that the county had to issue special construction permits just for the construction scaffolding.

It’s not to carry passengers, but rather rockets. The bigger the plane, the larger the rockets, or the greater the number.

Allen’s Stratolaunch company has partnered with Orbital ATK to “air launch” the Dulles-based company's Pegasus XL, a rocket capable of delivering small satellites, weighing as much as 1,000 pounds, to orbit. The rockets would be tethered to the belly of the giant plane, which would fly them aloft, and once at an altitude of 35,000 feet or so, the rockets would drop and “air launch” to space.

Washington Post

 

Healthcare Swiss Army Knife

The 18-pound Vocsn—its name is an acronym—combines a ventilator, an oxygen concentrator, cough assistance, suction, and a nebulizer to treat conditions such as muscular degeneration, spinal cord injury, and underdeveloped lungs.

Bloomberg

 

A hypersonic plane

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), also known as Skunk Works, revealed new information about their hypersonic technologies. Specifically, they discussed the successor to the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft: the SR-72, a strike and reconnaissance aircraft. The SR-72 tops Mach 6, and is currently in development within the advanced aircraft-development division. According to Lockheed Martin’s statements to Aviation Week, hypersonic technologies, including a combined cycle propulsion system that blends a rocket engine and a supersonic jet engine, are sufficiently advanced to allow the planned SR-72 project to begin.

Futurism

 

Getting Bot in the Kitchen

Robotic butlers that can cook dinner for the family won’t exist anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean technologists aren’t aiming to help out in the kitchen. A swath of companies, from appliance giants to gadgets startups, are fielding devices that help prepare meals and shop for groceries so families can eat more healthily. Here’s a look at some of the most promising devices so far.

Time (sub required)

FastCompany’s Most Creative People

The magazine’s annual top 100 list is out, with the first 10 below.

Well worth perusing the entire list rethinking everything in life.

Cheaper Private Planes

Starting at just under $2 million, the Cirrus Vision Jet is a single-engine private jet designed to be flown by its owner, not a professional pilot, with some training and an assist from advanced computer systems. And if there’s an emergency, a special parachute system can carry the jet to a gentle touchdown. “It is truly by design a personal transportation machine,” says Dave Rathbun, the jet’s chief engineer.

Time