Fujitsu Laboratories is teaming up with the Japan Gymnastics Association to create a new 3D laser sensor and data processing program that will help with scoring an athlete in competition. As gymnastic techniques become more advanced, “it is difficult to accurately judge and score a performance with the naked eye,” said Fujitsu and the gymnastics association. Fujitsu wants the program to use information from the sport’s governing body in Japan to distinguish “proper gymnastics techniques”, in hopes that the system will be able to analyze an athlete and help judge how accurate their technique was.
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Although the system is still in the works, it has a lot of support, both from the Japan Gymnastics Association and from the Japan Sports Agency commissioner, Daichi Suzuki, who has high hopes for the collaboration, and can see it being used at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games. The accuracy of the technology is going to be tested with “gymnastics data from athletes registered with the Japan Gymnastics Association,” said a spokesperson for Fujitsu. After this testing it would then be tested in the field at low level competitions.
The 3D software may also help create a standardized score system in gymnastics, eliminating bias, instead focusing purely on technique and difficultly of the move. The world of gymnastics scoring is a complicated one, in the past having many judges banned for bias in scoring. Judges are required to make split second decisions and a recent study found, “the best international judges reported approximately 40 percent of true errors.” The use of the 3D sensor technology could analyze the movement into numerical data and create more accurate scoring.
It has been suggested in the past by gymnastic associations that the use of present motion capture technology would be helpful to judges, but this idea has been shut down because, as Fujitsu said, “it requires the placement of multiple markers, thereby burdening the gymnast.” The new system could change the way gymnastics is scored and could help training for the sport and others, by analyzing each sport’s proper technique.