Wimbledon tournament spectators, the most traditional of tennis, have become accustomed to seeing, every year, the ritual of the “royal guard change” at the beginning of each match: the entry of women and men of navy blue blazer or cream-colored pants, carrying a striped and purple tie-the club’s official colors that houses the event. It was the line judges, nine per game, responsible, among other things, for screaming “Oct!” When the ball dripped off the court. This year will mark the end of a 147 -year tradition. The line judges – uniform in recent years, had the signature of the Ralph Lauren brand – will be replaced by artificial intelligence.
By abolishing this function, Wimbledon follows the example of other Grand Slam series, such as Australia and the United States. The elegant referees will be replaced by 12 cameras manufactured by the Japanese multinational Sony. “The new technology, based on computational vision, reconstructs the trajectory of the 3D ball with precision more than human perception,” says Rodrigo Tavares, a full SBE, the Faculty of Economics of the New University of Lisbon.
Tavares, who is a columnist for Sheetis creating a new course on impacts of artificial intelligence in various dimensions of human life.
The function of the chair judge, which is in a higher position with an overview of the whole game, will continue to exist in Wimbledon, as happens in Australia and the United States. “There is a profound transformation and not a decrease in the referee’s authority. In fact, as we are watching in so many other professions,” says Lénia Mestrinho, executive director of Digital Data Design Institute, technology study center created by the same New SBE in partnership with the American University Harvard.
What would this transformation look like? “Instead of the traditional referee, the referee comes: someone who interprets real-time data, manages technological information in the context of the game and maintains the human dimension of the decision-algo that, for AI, is more difficult to replicate. Reading the emotional environment, managing tension between players or the contextual application of rules are examples of areas where human judgment remains essential,” says Mestrinho. “The role of the referee evolves ‘look and decide’ to ‘interpret data and validate’. AI will bring more justice, but the wisdom in the application of the rules will remain a human attribute,” says Tavares.
How the digital line judge works
Function:
- Say if the ball went inside or out
- Define if athlete stepped on the line
Technology:
- 12 cameras track every movement of the ball
- Define the position of players’ feet
- Recreate each play in 3D
The tennis, therefore, walks side by side with football, where the use of VAR, acronym of “Video Assistant Referee”, or video referee. This technology faces criticism from fans by disrupting the progress of the games. Many times the fan has to wait long minutes until celebrating a goal, even after seeing his team swing the nets. A new technology based on artificial intelligence, however, has already reducing this delay, notably when it comes to marking impediments.
“Out -of -game new technology uses 12 specialized cameras installed at the stadium, capable of tracking the ball and 29 points from each player’s body, collected 50 times per second,” Mestrinho explains. “This is added a sensor placed inside the official ball, which sends data 500 times per second, allowing you to identify with great accuracy the exact moment of the pass. The whole process takes place in seconds.”
For Rodrigo Tavares, the interference of artificial intelligence in sports will go far beyond helping referees make better decisions. The Portuguese coach José Mourinho won several European titles being the precursor in the use of data for the preparation of tactical schemes. “They were, however, single data,” says Tavares. “The new algorithms can identify and predict collective patterns of team behavior during the match. They go far beyond traditional metrics, such as possession and number of passes, and try to understand the logic underlying field movements.”
Lénia Mestrinho shows how this works in practice. “Clubs like Manchester City or Benfica already use AI -based systems to anticipate the most likely position of opponents at certain phases of the game, allowing to optimize space occupation and create numerical superiority,” says Mestrinho. “In key moments, such as stopped balls, AI suggests sequences of motion with the most likely success, based on thousands of similar situations analyzed in seconds.”
The discussion about whether technology will make sports more exciting or more predictable is still open. At least in the case of arbitration the changes seem to be positive. “This greater degree of objectivity and traceability can ultimately contribute to mitigating the risk of undue or suspected behaviors, helping to protect the integrity of the game and the credibility of the institutions that regulate it,” says Mestrinho.
The only negative aspect seems to be the same that will affect several other professions where you have been using artificial intelligence: an entire category – Tennis line judges – will see your jobs slowly.
