Development of AI-based Technologies to Protect the Health and Enhance Performance of Athletes Participating in the Olympic Games

This application is based on a successful partnership between the Department of Sport Physical Education and Health (SPEH) at HKBU, UIC, and the General Administration of Sport of China. Our collaboration is focused on projects with particular reference to protecting the health and promoting peak performance in aspiring and top athletes. With this objective in mind, this application will focus on the real time monitoring of physiological, metabolic, cardiovascular, thermoregulatory and biomechanical responses during training and competition in order to understand the unique determinants of peak performance success in top athletes. For this purpose, our group have developed a world first non-invasive real-time monitoring system that provides instantaneous assessment of the athletes’ health and performance status by assessing key metrics such as heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), electrocardiogramme (ECG), thermoregulation (skin and core temperature), and biomechanical data (e.g., kinematics - left and right foot asymmetry). All these parameters will be integrated using our bespoke AI systems and processes. Numerous environmental monitoring systems will also be tested and integrated to develop an ecosystem and application that can display in real-time data on air and land surface temperature and relative humidity derived from geospatial technologies as well as equivalent data from mobile weather stations to aid in the interpretation of the athlete biometric data. This project is unique and of great significance to ensure the health of athletes in China and Hong Kong, to monitor training effectiveness and to maximize performance. A major goal of this research is to leverage our core technologies in AI and big data in sports science and our experience in applying these approaches to the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Summer Olympics to equip China and Hong Kong with the very best technological innovations for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics and the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. Our plan is to also implement and perfect this technology at the National Games to be held in the Greater Bay Area in November 2025.