1.8.2012 BMW 'eye' used to train Olympic athletes

In addition to being the official Automotive Partner for London 2012 and providing a fleet of over 4,000 low emission cars, BMW are also playing their part in the actual Games.

To assist US athletes, BMW has developed a camera system that captures information and data about a long jumper's performance, which is fed back to coaches to improve performance during training.

The German automaker has been testing a similar camera system in its research vehicles, to allow them to detect obstacles or pedestrians with the aim to improve safety in their cars.

"Being able to track the motion of an athlete is very similar to how we're going to track pedestrians and other objects," says Cris Pavloff, an advanced technology engineer at BMW.

As part of what have been billed as the ‘greenest Olympics’, BMW’s fleet has average CO2 emissions of just 116 g/km; the low figure helped by the inclusion of 320 electric and hybrid cars including 40 MINI Es, 120 ActiveHybrid 5-Series hybrids and 160 ActiveE 1-Series.

An additional 100 vehicles are also trialling three new advanced biofuels provided by official Olympic sponsor, BP. One of the blends is a cellulose ethanol produced from specific energy grasses, one is a sugar based diesel produced from any source of sugar and one is a biobutanol derived from the fermentation of plant sugars using a special micro-organism.

BMW also has a huge marketing campaign on-going in the Olympic Park, where their new 'i' brand is being displayed in their central pavilion. Due to begin launch next year, the 'i' brand consists of the all-electric BMW i3 – winner of Next Green Car’s Next Generation Award 2012 – and the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid; a highly efficient sports car with head-turning design.