FIFA has announced it will use AI at the upcoming World Cup in Qatar to give referees more data to made offside decisions. It will use purpose-built cameras and a tiny sensor in the football that relays its position on the field 500 times a second. There are twelve tracking cameras mounted underneath the roof of stadiums, which use machine learning to track 29 points in players’ bodies.
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FIFA claims this process will happen “within a few seconds and means that offside decisions can be made faster and more accurately.” The data generated by the cameras and ball will also be used to create automated animations, which can be played on screens in the stadium and in TV broadcasts “to inform all spectators in the clearest possible way” of why the call was made.
Software has been built that will combine all this data to generate automated alerts that are sent directly to the officials in a nearby control room, who will validate the decision and tell referees on the field what call to make. FIFA has been experimenting with a lot of automated technologies to make sure there is as little subjectivity in referees’ calls as possible. The most successful such technology from recent years is goal-line technology, which is now used everywhere.
In a press statement, Pierluigi Collina, chairman of the FIFA Referees Committee, said the new system would allow officials to make “faster and more accurate decisions,” but stressed that humans — not “robots” — were still in charge of the game. “I know that someone called it ‘robot offside’; it’s not,” said Collina. “The referees and the assistant referees are still responsible for the decision on the field of play.”
“This technology is the culmination of three years of dedicated research and testing to provide the very best for the teams, players and fans, and FIFA is proud of this work, as we look forward to the world seeing the benefits of semi-automated offside technology at the FIFA World Cup 2022,” said FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
