FIFA will use semi-automated technology and artificial intelligence to detect offside in the Qatar World Cup 2022, with the aim of “making faster, more accurate and reliable decisions” in the most important football competition in the world.
The ball will have an inertial measurement unit (IMU) inside it. acronym in English), which will send a data packet 500 times per second to the VAR room. This will allow the exact moment in which the ball is hit to be detected with absolute precision.
Furthermore, the new technological improvement will be accompanied by cameras installed under the roof of each stadium, to capture the movements of the ball. Included are 29 data points from each player that will be taken 50 times per second.
With the mix of tracking data from players’ extremities and the ball, and through artificial intelligence, the new technology provides an automatic warning to the video room; whenever a ball is received by an attacker who was in an offside position at the time his teammate played the ball.
To corroborate your proposal before reporting it to the main referee, the VAR refereeing team will manually check the exact moment of the hit provided by the data; as well as the automatically created offside line, based on the player’s limb positions calculated by the system. As it lasts only a few seconds, the process allows faster and more accurate decisions to be made.
“To make the implementation more affordable, FIFA is developing the so-called igniter VAR, which works with a smaller amount of TV cameras at a lower cost and even somewhat lighter and more affordable for the competitions that are covered”, said Pierluigi Collina, president of the FIFA Referees Committee, during the presentation of this new technological advance at a conference of virtual press.
Along the same lines, he added: “We are working on a more consistent VAR regarding the line of intervention. Additionally, we realize that sometimes the length of a reviewer’s controls is too long. We know that when analyzing a complex move, time flies. These more developed tools need time to find the exact stopping point, to define the position of the players”, he pointed out.
Semi-automatic offside technology can be used to create a new resolution adoption with a three-dimensional animation, automatically generated during the match.
Why do they call it semi-automated technology?
Johannes Holzmüller, director of the Football Technological Innovation Subdivision, declared that the new systems will provide video refereeing teams with real-time warnings, thanks to artificial intelligence.
“We call it ‘semi-automated technology for offside detection’ because the refereeing teams of video will continue to monitor the results and must corroborate the decision. The system constantly tracks and alerts once the ball is received by a player who was in an offside position when the ball was played,” he said.
To improve communication with fans, after the referee has confirmed the offside decision, a replay animation will be created and shown in the stadium and on television.
FIFA’s idea was to start in 2020 with the first tests. However, due to the COVID pandemic, they had to be postponed until the beginning of 2021. It was tested in some FIFA tournaments, such as the Africa Cup of Nations and the Club World Cup.
During the matches of these tournaments, the new technology helped VAR refereeing teams to make more accurate and reliable decisions in a short time.
The data collected during the online and offline trials was analyzed and validated by the Sports Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the limb detection technology was scientifically accredited by TRACK experts at the University of Victoria. A research team from the ETH University of Zurich has been providing more information on the technological capabilities of these multi-camera electronic tracking systems.
“We will be faster and more precise. These are the objectives of semi-automatic offside technology”, said Collina, for which “the more precise the better you are”.
2022
At FIFA we are very proud of this work and we look forward to the FIFA World Cup 2022 world see the advantages of this technology. FIFA is determined to take advantage of technological advances to improve football at all levels”.
Gianni Infantino, FIFA president
You can also read:
– Qatar’s new ban during the World Cup: involves vehicles
– Qatar 2022: Australia goalkeeper confesses why he played dirty against Peru’s goalkeeper during penalties– “We are going to continue with the same strength and conviction”: Chile resorts to TAS to leave Ecuador without a World Cup