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Technology

Wimbledon Abolishes Line Judges in Favor of Automated Technology After 147 Years (theguardian.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
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."

Wimbledon Abolishes Line Judges in Favor of Automated Technology After 147 Years More | Reply

Wimbledon Abolishes Line Judges in Favor of Automated Technology After 147 Years

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  • just wait for an player to smash the cameras!

    • 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.

  • You can not be serious (Score:4, Funny)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @12:44PM (#64851325)
    sheesh

    • Yep - all the incorrect decisions should be auto-fixed by AI and back-propagated. Mac ftw!

      • 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 ?

  • Good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bobthesungeek76036 ( 2697689 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @12:59PM (#64851367)
    Major League Baseball needs to be next calling pitches electronically.
    • To repeat myself, by "electronically", you mean "by putting a cardboard box on its side resting on a end table behind the batter".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      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]

    • 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 n

      • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

        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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      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.

  • Screaming at a box just won't have the same feeling..

    • 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.

      • 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'"

    • Screaming at a box just won't have the same feeling..

      An actual cardboard box would be challenged to respond with a more carboard-emotion than this:
        * https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Part of the ethos of sportsmanship is the player-ref (or player-judge) relationship. Just let players have some number of challenges that resort to the tech, like they do in some other sports, and penalize both players who make too many dismissed challenges and judges who make too many reversed calls.

    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.

    • 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.

  • Those complaining (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @01:28PM (#64851423) Homepage

    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.

    • 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 :-)

    • Just raw sports action.

      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...

  • In sports... (Score:3)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2024 @01:43PM (#64851471)

    played by humans it must be refereed by humans.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      To each their own, for sure. But I, for one, welcome our new robot umpire overlords. Looking at this from an MLB perspective, too many game-changing calls made by humans behind the plate calling balls and strikes. I prefer the contests to be "decided" by the players, not the officials. If a computer can do it more accurately and consistently I'm all for it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        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.

  • "I dreamed that I was a line judge at Center Court. Then I woke up and realized that I was indeed a line judge at Center Court."
  • There you go, another AI miracle!

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