On January 23, the Winter Olympic Village welcomed the first batch of “residents”, and the advance delegation from many countries and regions officially arrived.
It is reported that the Beijing Winter Olympic Games has three competition areas: Beijing, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. Each competition area has a Winter Olympic village. As the “home” of athletes during the competition, the Winter Olympic Village project lasted five years from site selection design to construction completion.
Among them, Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic village is located in the ice and snow town of Prince City, Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City, with a total construction area of 239000 square meters. The whole area is divided into three parts: residential area, square area and operation area.
Specifically, the residential area is composed of 9 courtyards and 1 single building, and each courtyard is surrounded by 3 to 4 small buildings; The square area covers an area of about 21700 square meters and consists of 22 operating spaces, including commercial services, sponsor services, franchising, traditional Chinese medicine exhibition and cultural activities; The operation area is the place that will provide access services for residents, visitors, media and other personnel in the village during the game, including athletes’ class station, delegation reception and visitor center, media center, security center, etc.
During the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic village is expected to receive more than 2600 athletes and team officials from delegations from 79 countries and regions. In order to make these residents from all over the world more familiar with the environment of the Winter Olympic Village, Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic village has not only made a careful guidance in the real scene, but also made a AR navigation application by combining the technology of Shang Tang.
Based on this application, athletes can identify the surrounding real scene through their mobile phone and lock their position. After entering the destination, they can arrive by following the AR virtual arrow on the ground.
Compared with traditional navigation methods, AR navigation combines route identities with real scenes and has a more immersive visual experience. At the same time, AR navigation enables athletes to have a more intuitive grasp of the overall surrounding environment, including their location and access path.
Science and technology Winter Olympics is a key word of the Beijing Winter Olympics. During the whole event, the application of new technology can be seen in almost every link. The map of Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic village is also an epitome of science and technology Winter Olympic. With the help of AI, AR and other new technologies, virtual and reality can be integrated. More importantly, it can effectively help the villagers of Winter Olympic village.
challenges of Winter Olympic Village
According to the reporter’s understanding, the AR navigation system in Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic village is one of the achievements of the research project of “AR navigation system research based on 3D real-time precision positioning technology, virtual reality combined with high accuracy”, under the auspices of the Ministry of science and technology’s “Winter Olympic Games” key special project, “intelligent display and advanced display technology development and application demonstration”.
In May 2021, Shangtang technology applied for the project, and the project was officially determined in August of the same year.
The head of Shang Tang technology Winter Olympic Games told the twenty-first Century business reporter that the basic technology of AR navigation is the construction and deployment of high-precision maps in large-scale scenes. In this regard, Shang Tang technology has accumulated some technical and practical experience.
For example, Shangtang technology has created an “ar tour route” for Hangzhou West Lake scenic spot. On this 1.4 km long line, visitors can scan the real scene with mobile phone App, and then open the AR navigation and browsing mode. In addition, the same technology has also been applied to indoor scenes such as Changsha Huanghua Airport and Chengdu IFS mall.
Therefore, in terms of basic technology, building AR navigation in Winter Olympic village is not too difficult for Shang Tang technology, but there are still some challenges in the specific implementation process.
For example, in data collection, the core of AR navigation is visual localization, real image information is the most basic material, but because winter Olympic Village project has been in the process of construction, Shang Tang technology in November last year for the first time panoramic data collection, many places have not actually completed construction, so in December, Shang Tang also made a data supplement.
This also led to the fact that although the whole project had been finalized in August last year, it was actually implemented after the completion of data collection in November. Moreover, the technical model should be continuously adjusted according to the real scene data updated in real time, so the time is relatively urgent.
In addition, there is an important difficulty in the project. The project leader of Shangtang technology said that the style of buildings in the Winter Olympic village is relatively unified, so there are large areas of similar textures in various places, and there are often snow covered roads, vegetation and buildings, resulting in a lot of visual changes in the scene. There are great challenges to accurately identify their own position based on images in this environment.
solve problems with technology
Therefore, Shangtang science and technology innovatively supported the construction of centimeter high-precision 3D map of Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic Village in a short time through the data association method and parameter block optimization method of GPS and visual fusion. At the same time, Shangtang technology has also developed a cloud integration architecture to realize the coordination of cloud global positioning and terminal local tracking.
Among them, in the global positioning of the cloud, Shangtang technology solves the problem of similar scenes by comprehensively using visual, Bluetooth, GPS and other signals, and trains robust image features under different weather conditions for ice and snow scenes;
In terms of terminal local tracking, Shang Tang technology has achieved stable tracking under the condition of low computing power by means of cloud map information and its own sensors. This enables the final AR navigation application to achieve real-time and precise 6 degree of freedom space positioning in complex scenes.
In addition, Shangtang technology has also established a set of virtual content editing and creation tool chain, which can quickly create various ar contents through visual editing tools. Bing dwen dwen also makes the content of AR navigation more abundant. For example, athletes may see the mascot of Beijing Winter Olympic Games Flying in the air while they are using it, and they may also see some virtual large screens.
The head of Shang Tang technology told reporters that before the Winter Olympic village was officially opened, the entire AR navigation application had been tested for nearly a month, and some problems were discovered during the test.
For example, the previous positioning scheme was not accurate enough in some special scenes. Later, Shangtang technology avoided the problem through the secondary positioning solution; For another example, in the test process, Shangtang technology found that the Winter Olympic village was an inclined plane with a drop of several meters. Later, it also used technical methods to dynamically plan the navigation map on a horizontal plane through re modeling.
After repeated tests and modifications, the AR navigation application has been able to guarantee precise positioning and immersive AR navigation experience without delay in Zhangjiakou’s Winter Olympic village near any 240 thousand square meter area.
In addition, taking into account the different habits of athletes, AR navigation applications do not need separate App, and can be used only with web browsers.
Shang Tang technology leader told reporters that in order to AR navigation project, Shang Tang set up a fixed team of more than 20 people. During the Winter Olympic Village operation, the team will also be on duty in the rear to ensure the smooth operation of AR navigation project. It is reported that the Winter Olympic Village will officially open on January 27 and close on March 16 for a total of 53 days.
