Tokyo Olympics: Soaring heart rates laid bare on TV as archers okay new tech

View of a heart-rate display on a screen during archery at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games in Japan on June 28, 2021. — Reuters

TOKYO: In an Olympic first, more than 100 archers are broadcasting their heart rates as they go for bullseye at the Tokyo Games, pushing forward contactless health monitoring despite disquiet in some quarters on accuracy and surveillance implications.

Pattern-recognition software from Japanese tech giant Panasonic Corp is calculating heartbeats per minute by tracking face colour in live video from standard cameras placed 12 metres from the shooting line. Variations correlate to pulse, which displays on the Olympics television feed.