Ask Slashdot: Project Scope For MLB Robot Umpires?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 11, 2011 @10:39PM from the go-tigers dept.

nightcats writes "The League Championship Series of baseball are upon us, and numerous sports media pundits, armies of fans at comment boards, and TV people are openly debating the possibility of robot umpires coming to Major League Baseball, to either replace or enhance the human umps' work on the field. Question: what kind of project are we reasonably talking about here? What would the scope and length be from planning/design to user testing/implementation (presumably in a spring training/minor league setting)? What kinds of hardware (video scanners, touch-sensitive bases/foul lines, etc.) and software would be required?" And, as long as we're on the subject — do you think it would be good for the game?

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Re:Everyone said it would ruin tennis... by KillaBeave · 2011-10-12 01:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

IAAFLLU (I am a former little league umpire) - I'd be all for having a sensor based ball/strike call. Nothing more annoying than having 1/2 the fans yelling strike and 1/2 yelling ball ... over a game for 9yr olds. A simple red/green light somewhere would be perfect. In my opinion the home plate ump is still needed though to ensure that foul balls are picked up properly and judge if the batter swung or not (some of those calls are really close). Not to mention tag out situations. If the system was a simple boolean limited to "was the ball in the strike-zone" or not I think it could improve the game by a large amount.