Intel's 3D and AI tech now helps train athletes

Intel today revealed that its 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT) technology is being employed by Exos, a firm that focuses on human performance conditioning, to help train professional athletes aspiring to join the National Football League (NFL) and other organizations. Intel's 3DAT technology captures skeletal data when an athlete is sprinting, using a video camera running at 60 frames per second. That data is then analyzed using Intel Deep Learning Boost AI capabilities that have been built into the latest generation of Intel Xeon Scalable processors Intel has deployed in a cloud it manages. The goal is to make it simpler for coaches and athletes to understand how different types of skeletal structures may give one athlete an edge over another, said Ashton Eaton, two-time Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and a product development engineer in Intel's Olympic Technology Group. "We don't know why people won or lost," Eaton said. "There are a lot of unknowns."