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" There is no shortage of performance enhancing drugs being used to cheat in the world of sports, just look at last night&amp;#039;s episode of Last Week Tonight. But in the world of bicycle racing, so-called mechanical doping is on the rise, and the Tour de France will be whipping out thermal cameras in an attempt fight it.\u00A0 Mechanical doping\u2014also known as &amp;quot;cramming a tiny motor in the frame of your bike&amp;quot;\u2014first started getting mainstream attention after\u00A0Belgian cyclist Femke Van den Driessche had her bike confiscated after the\u00A0Cyclocross World Championships and an inspection revealed a tiny motor hidden inside the frame.\u00A0 Then, a joint investigation by\u00A0Italy&amp;#039;s\u00A0Corriere della Sera\u00A0and France&amp;#039;s T\u00E9l\u00E9visions Stade 2 turned up footage to suggest this isn&amp;#039;t uncommon, spotting suspicious heat signatures in a number of racers&amp;#039; bikes by gazing at them with thermal cameras. The publications declined to name the suspected cheaters\u00A0since the evidence merely raised suspicions, but now the\u00A0Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) will be adopting\u00A0similar techniques to try and spot cheaters on this year&amp;#039;s Tour de France.\u00A0 According to BBC Sport, thermal cameras in use during the race will be portable, mounted on the back of roadside motorcycles. In addition, officials will also be scanning bikes with a &amp;quot;magnetic resonance system&amp;quot; at the start and end of the event.\u00A0 The machines used for mechanical doping are certainly impressive bits of engineering, generally featuring tiny driveshafts that fit into a bike&amp;#039;s frame beneath the seat post, or\u00A0possibly even\u00A0magnetic drives\u00A0that use coils in the bike&amp;#039;s frame to interact with magnets in the wheels.\u00A0 But no matter the level of stealth and miniaturization, these solutions all\u00A0throw off some sort of heat, which makes them simple to spot with machine vision. So if the cheaters want to keep cheating, they&amp;#039;ll have to come up with a way to defy the laws of physics.\u00A0 Source: BBC via Engadget "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a21550/tour-de-france-thermal-cameras-mechanical-doping/>