FIFA will use a semi-automated technology program to resolve offside situations during matches at the Qatar 2022 World Cup, which will take place from November 20 to December 18.
Twelve cameras installed under the roof in the stadiums will capture the movements of the ball and up to 29 data points of each player, 50 times per second, to calculate their exact positions on the pitch.
The 29 groups of data collected from each footballer include the extremities and parts of the body that are taken into account to indicate if a position is enabled by regulation.
The official Al Rihla ball, from the German firm Adidas, will include an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which will be decisive for detecting off-regulation positions. This sensor, located in the center of the ball, will send a data packet 500 times per second to the video room, which will provide extreme precision on the exact moment the ball is impacted, a fundamental criterion to determine an advanced position.
Football’s highest governing body hopes the new system will help video refereeing teams and on-field referees make faster, more accurate and more reliable decisions.
With the crossing of data collected by devices and artificial intelligence, the new technology will send an immediate warning to the video referee booth every time a player in a prohibited position receives the ball from a teammate.
The VAR room team will check the information received by the system and then notify the main referee through the intercoms to execute the decision. In that instance, the video referee team must manually check the exact moment of impact of the ball and the offside line also automatically created by the system, based on the positions of the player’s extremities.
That process will last a few seconds, according to tests of the platform that FIFA did during the 2021 Arab Cup and the 2021 Club World Cup.
Once the offside is sanctioned, the system will generate a 3D animation with all the information collected from the moment the ball is hit in the play under study. These images will be projected on the screens of the stadiums and will be distributed to the media with rights to broadcast the matches so that attendees and viewers have clarity and transparency after the referee’s sanction.
The semi-automatic offside detection system in football was approved by the Sports Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by a group of TRACK experts from the University of Victoria and also by a research team from the ETH University of Zurich .
Information and credits from: telam.com.ar
