Just over ten days before the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games (the Games), news about the Games is spreading all over. For example, Beijing will become the first city to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics in February 2022. It is reported that China has only a sporadic number of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, an extremely high vaccination rate, and strict and independent prevention and control policies. Such situations are undoubtedly the best logistical guarantee for ensuring the safety of athletes during the Games.
Meanwhile, the Official Media of the Chinese Olympic Committee states that the Games will adhere to the purpose of "green and high-tech Winter Olympic Games" and create the first-ever 5G technology-driven "cloud Olympics" in history. Such cutting-edges, like 5G, cloud computing, big data, Internet, and AI, will make a new appearance in the Games.
The National Speed Skating Hall ("ice ribbon") is the only newly-built venue in Beijing for the Games. It adopts the single-layer two-way orthogonal saddle-shaped cable net roof with the largest span in the world, and the steel consumption is only one-quarter of that of the traditional top. The National Snowmobile and Sleigh Center, dubbed "Xueyoulong", adopts the millimeter-level hyperboloid concrete spraying and finishing molding technology, and the 1.9km track is sprayed and poured at one time. The National Swimming Center has frozen its "Water Cube" into "Ice Cube". The prefabricated rapid disassembly and leveling dynamic monitoring technology is applied to complete the site conversion within 20 days.
In terms of communication, various event presentation means, such as 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT) platform, 360° Virtual Reality (VR) platform, and Digital Twins-enabled Venue Simulation System (VSS), are also major scientific and technological highlights.
The event production end of the Games will apply cloud broadcasting technology and use a 5G network to transmit audio and video signals to the cloud broadcasting platform. By then, the audience can get a multi-perspective and personalized viewing experience. Meanwhile, intelligent sign language broadcasters integrating large-scale sign language corpus, intelligent speech recognition, and video synthesis technology will accurately broadcast events for the disabled worldwide.Beijing Winter Olympics 2022