Reporters Sun Junjie and Guo Jian

 

"At present, more than 500 Polaris clocks have been installed in the three venues of the National Alpine Skiing Center, the National Bobsleigh and Luge Center, and the Ice Hockey Stadium, covering almost all areas of the venues, ensuring that all participants and trainees can see the unified and standard 'Polaris' time." Recently, at the Yantai Watch Research Institute Co., Ltd. located in the Yantai High-tech Zone, Chairman Hu Jianfeng proudly told reporters that the clock systems of previous Winter Olympic Games were almost "monopolized" by European and American companies. It was the first time that Chinese watch suppliers entered the Winter Olympics.

 

"At that time, many well-known high-end brands of clock equipment manufacturers at home and abroad participated in the selection. After fierce competition, Polaris stood out with its century-old brand and advanced technology, excellent quality, stable and reliable performance." Hu Jianfeng said that the company organized a core team of R&D and design to carry out special R&D and tailor-made time synchronization systems, hoping to use the Winter Olympics to show the power of "Yantai Smart Manufacturing".

Yantai Clock and Watch Research Institute Co., Ltd. is affiliated to Yantai Polaris State-owned Holding Co., Ltd. It is the company's technology development center and a research and development base for special technical clocks. At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the main function of the Polaris intelligent clock system is to provide a unified standard time for competition timing and scoring, video recording, security, office and related intelligent equipment to ensure the normal and orderly operation of the Winter Olympics events and peripheral systems.

 

"After winning the bid for the Winter Olympics venue project, we quickly organized key personnel to carry out special research and development. From the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2021, the institute will complete the production, installation and commissioning of the equipment. The time is short and the task is heavy, which brings great challenges to the R&D team and the project implementation team." Yang Jiaye, chief technical engineer of Yantai Clock and Watch Research Institute Co., Ltd., told reporters that in order to ensure the stable operation of the equipment under various conditions, all Polaris clocks have passed the high and low temperature aging test of -30℃-70℃. In terms of system operation, a series of safety measures such as advanced distributed structure, modular design, redundant hot standby, and information level-by-level double verification are adopted to ensure that the terminal equipment displays accurate time whether it is online or offline.
 

In addition to hard-core technology, Yantai Clock and Watch Research Institute Co., Ltd. has also fully considered the appearance details of the clock to make the design more humane. "The clocks in the athlete rest area, competition area, office area and other areas are all customized, and the clock brightness can be automatically adjusted according to the intensity of the indoor light to ensure that the athletes are not affected by the light when they are resting. During sleep, you can also set a fixed time period to turn off the light source, which is more green and energy-saving." Yang Jiaye said. After a series of complex and rigorous processes such as design, manufacturing, delivery, technology integration, joint debugging and testing with all intelligent communication equipment, inspection and acceptance, and safety assessment, the North Star clock was finally determined to be used in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. "In this process, we have achieved several "firsts", including the independent localization of technology and equipment, and the use of China's Beidou satellite time scale as the time benchmark, etc., to ensure that the clock system in all areas of the venue can achieve accurate, unified, safe and reliable intelligent monitoring and operation." Yang Jiaye told reporters. In addition, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway, a key transportation guarantee project for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, also uses the North Star intelligent clock system throughout the line. In order to match the century-old history of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, Yantai Clock and Watch Research Institute Co., Ltd. hired professionals to design the appearance of the clocks and watches, so that each station has a different view. Nowadays, when you walk into the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway Taizicheng Station, Beijing North Station, Badaling Great Wall Station, Zhangjiakou Station and other high-speed railway stations, you can see the North Star clocks that are highly integrated with the unique cultural atmosphere of "Hundred Years of Beijing-Zhangjiakou". "Hundred Years of Beijing-Zhangjiakou" and "Hundred Years of North Star" complement each other and jointly "escort" the Winter Olympics.