Going for Olympic Gold:

With just two months to go before the 2024 Paris Olympics, the National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) gym is hopping. Tang Chia-hung, a member of the national gymnastics team, is here rehearsing a horizontal bar routine with a difficulty rating of 16.5 for the Paris games. As we watch, he swings from the bar, twists his body in the air and executes a perfect dismount. The applause is thunderous.

Tang is performing at an elite level despite completely rupturing his Achilles tendon in February 2023. Amazingly, he needed only two months of post-surgical recuperation before returning to competition in the rings qualifier at the National Intercollegiate Athletic Games, and went on to punch his ticket to the 2024 Olympics with win in a FIG World Challenge Cup just seven months after the injury.

“Winning a gold medal so soon after an Achilles rupture is incredible,” says Cheng Shih-chung, director-general of the Sports Administration at the Ministry of Education.

Tang’s rapid return to competitive form was enabled by one of Taiwanese healthcare’s strong suits—precision medicine—coupled with the fruits of the National Science and Technology Council’s Precision Sports Science Research Project.

Tang’s medical team and a precision sports technology team with members from NTNU and the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology were actively involved in his post-injury rehabilitation and training. They monitored Tang’s fatigue and evaluated the form and consistency of his movements to avoid further injuries, while also incorporating physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, and psychology into his training regime to strengthen both his body and his mind.

Weng Shi-hang, Tang’s coach and an assistant professor in the NTNU Department of Athletic Performance, says that at irregular intervals the sports technology team creates disturbances in the practice space and cultivates a tense atmosphere there, while using cameras and sensors to track team members’ heartrates. The dual emphasis on the mental and the physical aspects of training familiarizes our national athletes with the high-pressure environment of competition. In June of 2024, Tang once again won gold in the horizontal bar competition at the FIG World Challenge Cup in Koper, Slovenia..

A global trend

Shiang Tzyy-yuang, a professor in the NTNU Department of Athletic Performance and convener of the Sports Science Division of the National Sports Training Center, says that the rapid development of GPS, sensor, imaging, AI, and communications technologies and their wide adoption by the athletic community have become a global trend.

US Major League Baseball is a case in point. When Covid-19 emerged in 2020, the league launched new technology including not just canned applause, but also vision systems that use light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology to track the positions and movements of everyone on the playing field. During the Tokyo Olympics, organizers made use of AI, big data, and machine learning to provide the whole world with a high-quality technological experience. Wang Chi-lin and Lee Yang’s gold-medal men’s doubles badminton match offers a well-known concrete example of the Tokyo Olympics’ use of technology—the umpire made the line call that decided the match with the help of a vision system.

Tech is even more essential in scouting and data gathering for coaching purposes. Shiang says that competitors are especially reliant on images and AI to identify attack tempos and analyze strategies in sports that have long-lasting matches.

“The modern-day Olympics and world championships aren’t simply a test of skills between competitors. They are also a test of the respective countries’ tech.” He says that the whole world uses tech; the only difference is in how well each uses it.

A National Taiwan Normal University team is using technology and precision training to pave a path to Olympic gold for Tang Chia-hung (third from right). (courtesy of NTNU)

The NTHU Sport Technology Center team has worked with boxing coach Lee Chia-fen (far right) to develop new scouting and precision-training technologies.

A team from National Tsing Hua University, National Taipei University of Technology and National Taipei University of Education has developed a moving punching bag that enables boxers to spar with opponents virtually.

NTHU associate professor Hu Min-chun (left) and her research team developed a smart motion-capture system that analyzes athletes’ movements.

Precision sports technology

“Our national team performed well at the Taipei 2017 Universiade, spurring joint efforts by industry, government and academia to assist our athletes,” says Su Shuo-bin, director general of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). Su attributes the recent influx of technology into Taiwan’s athletic community to that support.

The NSTC launched its Precision Sports Science Research Project in 2018 to develop the sports-tech tools that coaches and athletes need to train and compete. Some of the results of these efforts have already been incorporated into national team members’ training routines and are even being commercialized.

National athletes are already making use of precision weightlifting training technology developed in academia. Here, Chen Wen-huei, a member of our Paris Olympics weightlifting team, works out at the National Sports Training Center. (photo by Kent Chuang)

Su Shuo-bin, director-general of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of the National Science and Technology Council, says that academia, industry and government are all striving to advance Taiwanese sports technology.

Professor Ho Wei-hua, chair of the Graduate Institute of Sports Equipment Technology at the University of Taipei, has developed weightlifting training tools that are being used by national athletes. (photo by Mei Kuo)

A precision weightlifting program

For example, Professor Ho Wei-hua, chair of the Graduate Institute of Sports Equipment Technology at the University of Taipei, has worked with weightlifting coach Lin Geng-neng, who coached a Tokyo Olympics gold-medal winner, to identify a set of training needs. They then assembled a multidisciplinary team with members from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, the National Sports Training Center, the Industrial Technology Research Institute, and industry to develop weightlifting training tools that to date have included a noise-and-vibration-reducing weightlifting mat, a smart barbell motion tracking system, a smart training mirror, and an app that provides feedback on weightlifting technique, all of which are already in use at the National Sports Training Center. As we approach the Paris Olympics, the group is working on a smart weightlifting belt, precision diet management technology, and an AI-powered robot coach.

Wu Sheng-kuang, a professor with the Department of Sport Performance at the National Taiwan University of Sport, leads a smart table-tennis program that integrates technology with sports medicine. The program has developed a smart table-tennis racket containing sensors that measure the user’s strike speed and efficiency. In fact, the International Table Tennis Federation has already approved use of the rackets for the Paralympics as a means of objectively ranking physically handicapped athletes.

The Taiwan Institute of Sports Science brought together industry and academia to develop technology that stabilizes archers’ hands to improve their accuracy.

Cheng Shih-chung, director-general of Sports Administration at the Ministry of Education, says that the government is doing its utmost to help national athletes succeed. 

Boxing tech

Meanwhile, a multidisciplinary team consisting of researchers from National Tsing Hua University’s Sports Technology Center, National Taipei University of Technology and Academia Sinica has developed an opponent scouting system for boxers. Unveiled at the Hsinchu Municipal Stadium boxing gym, the system was originally designed to assist national-team boxers Chen Nien-chin and Wu Shih-yi with their preparation for the Paris Olympics.

“In the past, sports training was built on a master–disciple relationship in which the training was based on the coach’s personal experience,” explains Chiu Wen-hsin, a professor in NTHU’s Department of Kinesiology. “Coaches drew on watching matches and videos, and even memories or handwritten notes made while scouting opponents. Valuable information was easily lost.”

Chiu and Chu Hung-kuo, an associate professor in NTHU’s Department of Computer Science (DCS), had their research group work with NTHU’s boxing team to integrate image-capture and AI technology into a scouting system that can identify the types of punches thrown in each sequence, tactics that won and lost points, and an opponent’s habitual actions. Once fight video footage is entered into the system, it can produce a scouting report in just 30 minutes. Chu says that it is very likely a leading example of a boxing scouting system with integrated AI. It is now also being used for scouting in basketball, table tennis and badminton.

Chu also worked with DCS associate professor Hu Min-chun’s research group to develop a smart motion-capture system that uses cameras set up around a boxing ring to capture a boxer’s movements. It then uses these images to analyze the boxer’s form, providing them with a reference for improving their technique. Ku Lun-wei, a research fellow with Academia Sinica’s Institute of Information Science, went on to integrate ChatGPT into the motion capture system to create a coaching and instruction system that generates more comprehensive reports. In the future, this system could be applied to scouting of opponents and refining the technique of athletes in basketball, table tennis and badminton as well.

Olympic boxing scout Lee Chia-fen says that when coaches and athletes are aware of an opponent’s skills, habits, strengths and weaknesses, they can better plan for the match. That knowledge also enables sparring partners to mimic an opponent’s fighting style and tactics, which also helps their teammate prepare.

The National Sports Training Center puts sports tech to practical use.

The Taiwan Institute of Sports Science’s primary mission is to cultivate national athletes, with the ultimate goal of getting the general public more involved in sports. The photo shows TISS’s first CEO, Michael C.H. Huang.

TISS has developed nutritious snacks that help athletes recover more quickly from workouts.

Washable smart clothing

Taiwan has long been a world leader in functional textiles. Makalot Industrial Co., Ltd. is a case in point. With support from the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ technology development programs and the Taiwan Textile Research Institute, the company has developed patented materials and processes for numerous smart fabrics, and recently worked with J-mex, Inc, a Taiwanese maker of microelectronic mechanical systems, to develop the MOXI Smart Mo-Cap Suit. A washable, highly stretchable smart garment with ten nine-axis sensors, the motion-capture suit won a Best Choice Award at the 2024 Computex and will help raise Taiwan’s profile within the international sports technology industry.

Wu Sheng-kuang, a professor with the Department of Sport Performance at the National Taiwan University of Sport, has developed a smart table-tennis racket that is being used to rank Paralympic athletes. (courtesy of Wu Sheng-kuang)

Wu Sheng-kuang’s smart table-tennis rackets. (courtesy of Wu Sheng-kuang)

Supporting the national team

The Taiwan Institute of Sports Science (TISS), which opened at the beginning of this year, aims to bolster the training, health and medical care of national-team athletes, and to gather data from international competitions. It also plans to work with industry to commercialize and distribute sports technology in the hope of making it available to the general public as a means of encouraging participation in sports.

But with the Paris Olympics starting soon, CEO Michael C.H. Huang says, “Our first priority has been helping national athletes and coaches break through training bottlenecks.” 

Huang mentions air pistol and archery training as an example of this focus. The key to both sports lies in precise hand movements that determine the stability of the weapon and the accuracy of the shot. TISS brought together experts from industry and academia who then used high-speed cameras and image-recognition technology to develop a system to identify hand positions. He says TISS also got involved in long jumping, bringing in a team from National Cheng Kung University that used imaging and algorithms to precisely calculate optimal values for variables such as stride length and pace that could then be applied to training athletes. 

Huang says that all countries scout their athletic opponents. By applying AI and algorithms to images from previous competitions, Taiwan can produce a scouting report on an opponent just 30 minutes after a match is set, helping our athletes prepare and increasing their chance of winning.

Cheng Shih-chung says that the National Sports Training Center has also incorporated technology into its new facilities. The optical underwater pacing system for the center’s new swimming pool is a case in point, using light signals on the bottom of the pool to help swimmers maintain consistent pace on medium- and long-distance training swims.

As an appreciative Tang explained at a press conference in the run-up to the Paris Games: “When I first joined the NTNU gymnastics team as a freshman, I had to do everything from moving equipment to preparing for tournaments on my own. Nowadays, everyone is working together to get me onto the medals podium. I’m very grateful for that.”

The sports world’s embrace of technology is improving the training and competitive ecosystem, and elevating athletes’ performance. By pouring its technological know-how into athletics, Taiwan is driving a wave of innovation and entrepreneurship in the sports industry. 

Makalot Industrial, a Taiwanese textiles producer, worked with MEMS-systems developer J-mex to create a washable, stretchable motion-capture suit that won a Best Choice Award at the 2024 Computex.  (photo by Mei Kuo)