Wimbledon Abolishes Line Judges in Favor of Automated Technology After 147 Years (theguardian.com) 70
The greatest tennis players in the world will be left to rage against a machine after any tight line calls at Wimbledon next year as the All England Club will break with tradition by removing line judges from all courts during the championships for the first time in its 147-year history. From a report: From 2025 onwards live electronic line calling (ELC) will be used on all courts in both the main draw at the All England Club and the qualifying tournament off-site in Roehampton. The new technology was successfully tested during this year's championships. Wimbledon's chief executive, Sally Bolton, said: "The decision to introduce Live Electronic Line Calling at the championships was made following a significant period of consideration and consultation."
Bolton added: "Having reviewed the results of the testing this year, we consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating. For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour."
Bolton added: "Having reviewed the results of the testing this year, we consider the technology to be sufficiently robust and the time is right to take this important step in seeking maximum accuracy in our officiating. For the players, it will offer them the same conditions they have played under at a number of other events on tour."
just wait for an player to smash the cameras! (Score:2)
just wait for an player to smash the cameras!
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just wait for an player to smash the cameras!
Depending on where they put these (I'm seeing pictures of cameras nearby as well as further away), I want to see a player "accidentally" put a ball through the camera.
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Nothing like being ejected from the contest and banned from future competition in the sport that pays your bills... Hope you saved enough before your temper tantrum ended your career.
You can not be serious (Score:4, Funny)
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Yep - all the incorrect decisions should be auto-fixed by AI and back-propagated. Mac ftw!
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Had McEnroe been playing with AI judges, would he have had his own AI to auto-yell "You can not be serious man?" - Would his AI have replayed video of chalk flying to JudgeBot2000 ?
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The question being, can the machines do a better job?
(Marketing hype isn't evidence.)
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I'm eager to see any profession which blows whistles in an annoying manner replaced by AI - arguably after customer service.
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Obvious answer is hell yes
Humans suck at this. Always have.
That being said, "professional sports" - all of it - needs to be trashed,. It's all garbage. Sports "fans" even more so.
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That being said, "professional sports" - all of it - needs to be trashed,. It's all garbage. Sports "fans" even more so.
with insightful opinions like this, we're all eagerly awaiting your political opinions.
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The fewer referees and umps in this world the better. There should always be a rules official running oversight but if a machine can do a better and more consistent job at making quick, objective calls then let them.
Settle down, Sam Altman. Your computer god is not any less fallible than the morons programming and training it.
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Sorry, but what?
In this particular case, the technology *is* better than the line judges. So, nope, quite a bit less fallible.
Do you think they should use inferior human beings, and ignore who should actually win?
It is obviously in the sports, athletes, and fans best interests to have this.
When it become available in other sports, why shouldn't it be adopted?
You are perhaps too quick to assume that it won't happen.
See u in 5 years...
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. Roboumps would be significantly more accurate than the current guys.
You can see it here
https://x.com/umpireauditor?la... [x.com]
and
https://x.com/UmpScorecards [x.com]
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Umpires do a lot more than call pitches though. They have to decide if the batter was sufficiently in the batter box when the pitcher threw, or else call a false pitch. They need to look and listen for any contact between the ball and the bat, to determine if it needs to be called a ball or strike. They call whether or not the batter is "struck by the pitch", which is somewhat subjective, and whether or not he therefore gets to walk to 1st base. They decide if the batter "swung" at the ball or not, to decide if it will be called a ball or a strike. They toss batters out for throwing the bat. Because of their position, they use their sightlines to call balls hit down the foul lines and whether they are in or out of foul...and it still needs to be called if they bounce in or out of the foul line. Not to mention calling all the tagouts and force-outs at home plate, which has nothing to do with batting at all.
Even if strike-zone software is perfected and adopted, that's a long way from replacing umpires.
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With an accelerometer, gyro, and transmitter in the bats and balls, combined with external triangulation... You could get ridiculously accurate detection of most of those items. Whether someone is intruding into a particular volume of space would probably require a couple of cameras.
No human could possibly be good enough to compete.
I say use the big screen to run a Tron-esque MCP avatar for the system.
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Even if strike-zone software is perfected and adopted, that's a long way from replacing umpires.
Since Ángel Hernández retired in May of this year, they can take their time replacing umpires. Were he still working I would be in favor of replacing just him with a robot umpire.
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Now that you have defined the parameters, I believe that a few sensors and a few cameras could probably take care of all of that sufficiently to allow athletes to adopt to the new standards that would be imposed by such a system (as far as limits, etc).
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They already use pitch-tracking software, and are very close to using it systematically to call strikes.
Umpires do a lot more than call pitches though. They have to decide if the batter was sufficiently in the batter box when the pitcher threw, or else call a false pitch. They need to look and listen for any contact between the ball and the bat, to determine if it needs to be called a ball or strike. They call whether or not the batter is "struck by the pitch", which is somewhat subjective, and whether or not he therefore gets to walk to 1st base. They decide if the batter "swung" at the ball or not, to decide if it will be called a ball or a strike. They toss batters out for throwing the bat. Because of their position, they use their sightlines to call balls hit down the foul lines and whether they are in or out of foul...and it still needs to be called if they bounce in or out of the foul line. Not to mention calling all the tagouts and force-outs at home plate, which has nothing to do with batting at all.
Even if strike-zone software is perfected and adopted, that's a long way from replacing umpires.
I never knew it was possible... but you've made Baseball sound even less exciting than I thought it was.
It's the same with American football, a game of 4 x 15 min quarters that takes 3 hours to play, at least with soccer, you know it's going to be over in 90 mins no matter what. Why do American sports require such complex rule systems? I've never once thought "Hmmm, the tax code, that sounds like a good basis for a recreational activity".
The one positive thing I can say about Baseball is that at least
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A lot of calling balls vs strikes is subjective. The strike zone extends from the midpoint between shoulders and belt down to the knees, "when the batter assumes his customary stance". It's up to the ump to decide if a batter is using his customary stance or fucking with the pitcher and trying to crowd the strike zone. The subjective human element is a part of the game you would have to take out to have strictly computer called strikes.
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Umpires and their mistakes are necessary evil, like police. They add no value.
No one comes to a ball game to watch umpires.
The outcome of a games should be determined by the players and their coaches, not umpires
Nothing an umpire does can improve a game. If he gets every call correct he has not made the game better. So all he can do is diminish the game.
MLB ought to have a zero-tolerance for umpire mistakes. To that end robo-umps are the best solution.
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The "customary stance" of a batter could be a matter of recorded values taken from video of at bats. Thus determined automatically by every batting attempt they make.
Outside, say 2 sigma, and it is outside their "customary stance".
Easy peasy.
What else do you have?
Outbursts (Score:2)
Screaming at a box just won't have the same feeling..
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Screaming at a box just won't have the same feeling..
It needs to be given a robotic voice so that when future John McEnroes start screaming at it, it loudly repeats I AM PERFECT, YOU ARE WRONG over and over.
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The tone should imply "It's irrelevant whether I'm objectively wrong - I'm automatically right - despite that my whole reason-to-be is 'to be objectively correct'"
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An actual cardboard box would be challenged to respond with a more carboard-emotion than this:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
They're "missing the point" (no pun intended). (Score:2)
It's weird to just forget about that and aim for technical perfection. If they want to do that, just replace the players too and have two machines hitting a ball back and forth forever.
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The rest of us just want to watch good tennis, and donâ(TM)t give a shit over this referee wankery.
The fact that most tennis fans canâ(TM)t name a single ref proves this.
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No, they aren't missing the point.
What is not to like about the *right person* getting the right amount of points?
Who cares how it's done? Part of the ethos of sportsmanship is getting the right point count, not haggling with the ref.
Your comparison to two machines hitting balls back and forth is just stupid, and I don't know how it fits in with anything about this story.
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Because it's not a math quiz, it's a game. A social activity. It's fine to have sports with exclusively technical scoring, but removing a long-standing human component - one whose imperfections directly caused some of various sports' most famous and history-making moments - is just shallow. Watching tennis players lose their shit over a call is fun. Watching a baseball coach dog an ump over a call is fun.
Only people I
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Watching a baseball coach dog an ump over a call is fun.
YOU may think it's fun watching coaches rip the ump a new asshole for blowing ball/strike calls, but you are in the minority. (There's a reason the AAA baseball games all have some form of electronic ball/strike calls. MLB has done the math.) You know what I think is fun? Not watching the player/team I support getting fucked by a horrible call. Obviously we are both entitled to our opinion. I'm not saying yours is wrong, I'm just saying I don't agree with it.
Just say there was one and generate scores by rolling dice. If it doesn't matter how you got the score as long as it's recorded properly, what's the difference?
This is a ridiculous analogy. The entire point
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I don't think I am though. If you've ever heard the name John McEnroe, it's for sure not just because he was technically superior. The man is a character, and used call disputes on the court as an opportunity to bring out that character. Plenty of people in other sports likewise. And not just his supporters: It's almost as entertaining when your guy is the hero of the story. N
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I don't think I am though.
Robo-umps are coming to MLB in one form or another. If it's not the 2025 season it'll be the 2026 season, I'd bet a paycheck on it. A sport that lives and dies on analytics isn't going to just implement something like that because they want to. They are doing it because their analytics tells them that's what the majority of fans want.
If you've ever heard the name John McEnroe.
I get nothing out of watching an adult acting petulant because they didn't like a call. I guess it's the difference between the people that watch NASCAR for the racing and tho
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A human ref is either on the level or they
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A human ref is either on the level or they're not, but technology can be manipulated nine ways from Sunday before anyone even smells a rat.
This is a reasonable argument. But I would think that with the number of eyes and cameras on the plays it's pretty easy to analyze the results and root out anything nefarious. They can freeze-frame a pitch from 5 different live camera angles and tell with pretty good confidence if it was where the computer "put" it or not. I don't feel like it would be able to be manipulated enough to make any meaningful impact, and would still be an improvement over the accuracy of a home plate ump.
And people obviously enjoy hockey with fights
I'm not sure I agree wi
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Your whole first argument is "Well *I* like it!" Lol. Not very good start.
"Only people I can think of who actually want a game to be more predictable are bookies."
It's the *athletes* who are supposed to make the game unpredictable, not the refs.
"Then what's the point of even performing the match? Just say there was one and generate scores by rolling dice."
You really aren't there to watch the sports, are you? You just want car crashes.
"Yes, making the right call is part of sportsmanship... because it's chall
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Saying it's on the players is moot if they're not allowed to challenge decisions. Such a move ultimately makes player performance irrelevant, since over time it will descend into technical obscurities about the precision of measurements and the security of software rather than simply being common sense that the call is right or wrong.
Take a gander at the exhausti
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> Such a move ultimately makes player performance irrelevant, since over time it will descend into technical obscurities about the precision of measurements and the security of software rather than simply being common sense that the call is right or wrong.
This is absurd. I won't continue the conversation when you are spouting such stuff.
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Those complaining (Score:5, Insightful)
Those complaining probably don't follow sports all that closely, or isolated into a few sports categories.
These systems were in place at the Summer Olympic Games this year already for some sports. It was freaggin GREAT. The level of accuracy the system provided, the live replays it enabled (both real and enhanced CG to show ball/line in 3D position up-close) were unparalleled to anything we've had previous, and the system is FAST.
It kept the game being THE GAME, the players playing, rather than the officials officiating. No holdups, no slow downs. Just raw sports action.
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These system also have the advantage that beyond a tone of voice implying their objective-correctness-is-irrelevant, they can provide instant-deep-fakes backing-up their incorrect-objective-correctness :-)
Re: Those complaining (Score:1)
Gotta make the English version parse the way it's supposed-to :-)
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Let's not forget that real sport involves you(!) getting sweaty and healthier rather than simply offloading this to others at a financial- and health-cost to yourself.
Or perhaps I'm wrong and a future Olympic event will be sitting in an armchair eating chips and drinking beer...
Re: Those complaining (Score:1)
In sports... (Score:2, Insightful)
played by humans it must be refereed by humans.
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Agreed, but the referee is still there to give the points and enforce sportsmanship. The new technology is to check if a gizmo has touched a line. Many other sports are using technologies to check if gizmos touch lines, or in which order the gizmos have touched lines. Can think of fencing, long jump, biathlon, darts.
Re:In sports... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sport is ideally competition between athletes at a given endeavour. You want to see who can get an edge by working the ref.
That's a different game.
If the automated ref is better than human, you're getting a 'purer' competition; the machines will not have empathy or bias to exploit nor random inattention to miss anything.
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The batter makes the strike zone with how he holds his body. There's an element of sportsmanship to it that the umpire has a role in policing via his subjective ability to call balls and strikes. This is evidenced by the fact that there have been historical examples of attempting to game the system by e.g. drafting dwarfs [wikipedia.org] or having a stance that involves squatting so the strike zone is six inches high.
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My point though is that batter-to-batter inconsistency is literally in the rule book. It's a fundamental part of the game. You can't take the subjectivity out without changing the rules to suit the robots.
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You can't take the subjectivity out without changing the rules to suit the robots.
And I'm 100% onboard with updating the rules however needed to push towards robotic consistency. Honestly, I like the review system that they were using in the minors this last year. It gives the batters and pitchers the ability to question a call (without getting thrown out) and it keeps the subjectivity and gamesmanship mostly intact. The only complaints I've heard from the minors were from the "purists" that like the inconsistency that's involved with human umps.
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The strike zone is midpoint between the batter's shoulders and the top of their uniform pants. The bottom is just below the batter's kneecap.
A computer can easily determine this for every stance for every batter, no matter the size or how they try to game the system, by having a minimum size and other basic rules if necessary (I don't know what they did for 6" strike zones, but there's no reason it wouldn't work for an computer system).
It would be able to call balls and strikes perfectly.
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played by humans it must be refereed by humans.
Why? A referee is not a player. A sport is humans playing against each other. The rules and calls made should be 100% free from the potential of human error. A human referee doesn't add anything to the sport other than potential error and someone for the athletes to argue with in vain.
I say the opposite. A sport played by humans should not be refereed by humans, unless that sport is competitive refereeing.
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played by humans it must be refereed by humans.
Sure, next we should remove the nets from hockey and have humans judge whether it would have gone through the "goal zone".
The point of athletics is fair competition between the athletes. The refs are human, and people should accept they're fallible, but when they can be replaced by a far less fallible system they should be, after all, the focus should be on the players. Not the judgments of the refs.
A story (Score:2)
Out to the Unemployment Lines for You! (Score:2)
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Line judges are not full time work. They are part time seasonal jobs. No one is standing in the unemployment line over this.
How is the technology secured? (Score:1)
They are completely missing the point.... (Score:2)
If their goal is "m
Unionize! (Score:2)
The lineskeepers should join the Longshoreman's Union. No one tells Daggett that machines will replace them - whether it's a good idea or not.