Canada’s Andre De Grasse races in his 200m heat at the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday August 16, 2016. COC Photo/Mark Blinch
Atos, the European IT provider, is a partner for the Olympic Games that has a futuristic vision of how technology can change the fan experience in future competitions.
“I remember in London looking at people in the stadium looking at another competition on their tablet and tweeting on their mobile phone, and this ubiquity aspect is increasing,” Patrick Adiba, Atos’ CEO of Major Events and Olympics, said at Mobile World Congress last week. “And in the future, we are thinking of even potentially having holograms of a competition that can be seen in many stadiums in the world. You could have something in Pyeongchang being seen here in holograms in a stadium in Barcelona.”
Taking advantage of technological advancements in the bandwidth that can handle massive amounts of data, Atos has continued to speak of using holograms for future Olympics.
Last July, Atos Ascent guest editor Simon Kuper wrote, “In the pages of this magazine, the Atos Scientific Community asks us to imagine a 100m sprint final with eight people – none of whom are in the same location. That could actually happen at an Olympic Games in the forseeable future. Each athlete could run in his or her own city, and yet they could appear together as holograms in the same race. You could imagine a full house at London’s Olympic Stadium cheering on the runners they see in front of them even though none of the athletes are physically in London.”
Kuper repeated a line that Atos stated in a 2012 press release.
“Beyond 2020, we see the potential for event organisers to stage events where athletes compete in the same race yet are located in different countries,” according to the company. “Each athlete could run in his or her own city, and yet they could appear together as holograms in the same race.”
