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Ask Slashdot: Project Scope For MLB Robot Umpires?
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?
Pretty much everything could be accomplished using cameras, and software like Hawkeye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawk-Eye).
This is what they use in tennis to track balls moving well over 200km/h. It is supposedly accurate to within the fuzz on the tennis ball. This can handle strikes/balls, foul calls, home runs, and potentially even tag-outs.
The technology is there. I remember hearing that it took a trailer full of electronics to draw the first-down line in football a decade ago, and now it can be run on a high end laptop.
In baseball, with the rising number of incorrect calls at the plate, I'm all for electronic verification. We saw a perfect game (or was it a no-hitter...) stolen last year by a bad call at first base. The strongest argument against using these techniques is that it increases the barrier to entry for kids to "really" be playing the game they see on TV. With sports like soccer, options like these are rarely considered for this reason. To match what the kids see on TV, they need a few posts, a ball, and maybe their favorite player's jersey. Add cameras, and you've added an element no child can hope to include in their own game with their friends.
But all that's changed in tennis is McEnroe's endless rants about bad line calls. Tennis has never been better. Umpires should still call out/safe calls, but ball/strike should have been given to a computer long ago, especially seeing what an inconsistent job the umps do at it.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Mmmmm... first, the issue that from your words it looks like every umpire in every game in every sport is being bribed, or in risk of being. So much for conspiracy theories. There are economic interests in the game and when this happens there is always a risk of illegal behavior, ok. Jumping from that to "the system looks legit because there are too many groups trying to rig it" is quite unfounded. We know that for some people "free market" is the blanket answer to every question, but this is ridiculous.
Second. Right now, if someone bribes an umpire, it cannot be proven other than by the money movement. An umpire does fail? It was not a good day for him. The fails favour only one of the sides? Bad luck. Change that against "the robot code is calibrated before the game, the SHA1 of the code compared with the official one, then calibrated again after the game and stored for independ review" and you get that cheating with robots is orders of magnitude more difficult than with human umpires. Changes in robots are traceable. An incorrect decision? Go to the program, feed the same input, find if it is a software bug or manipulation. You would need to have a signficant part of the organization in your pocket for it to work. If you think that someone can get away with it, I think it is safe to assume that "that someone" can already be owning all of the umpires, all of the officials, all of the teams, all of the games now.
Why can't
In many spectator sports, hating the ref is a big part of the fun; baseball in the USA, ice hockey in Canada, soccer in Europe (especially Italy).
Having a flawless robot instead of a ref would be like an episode of 24 where Jack Bauer is not slowed down by people of the FBI trying to arrest him while he is trying to find a nuclear bomb hidden by terrorists in downtown LA. The "enemy" would still be there but the spectator would feel cheated.
lucm, indeed.
Give the umpire behind the plate some sort of augmented reality HUD headset that shows the strikezone and highlights the ball as it comes over the plate. The feed from the Umps headset could also be used in broadcasts. Uses technology without removing the human element of the game. I'll start working on it if MLB wants to pony up the cash...most (if not all) of it would just be COTS hardware.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
It would certainly be funny to see a red-faced coach screaming at a camera that it should get its lenses cleaned and sensors calibrated.
~Syberz
As someone that has attended one of the two professional umpire schools in Florida and had conversations with the umpires actually working in MLB, I'd like to bring some perceptive to this. These umpires are highly trained, high paid individuals that are the cream of the crop in their profession. They are under constant scrutiny from the Umpire Supervisor (who is Charlie Reliford, an excellent umpire in his own right) and his observers who ensure they are performing to the best of their ability. Obviously, mistakes are made and with instant replay, we can relive them over and over again. Umpiring is about being in the right spot at the right time to see the play and make the call. It is 95% positioning and 5% actually calling what you see. If you aren't in the right position, that is when you get in trouble.
Back to robots and their place in the field of umpiring. I think monitoring fair/foul like in tennis and similar things is a valid application, but anything beyond that is not very feasible as proper positioning is very subjective to the situation. I'd think that some sort of eye piece with a HUD that was able to track the ball and allow the umpire to reply what he saw would be the best option for baseball. Not sure if it at all feasible, but I don't think you'd get too much opposition for the umpire association. Instant reply has problems with when should it be used, how long should it take, and the like. Nearly all plays in baseball have significance and have the chance to alter a game, especially during a close game. Baseball can already be a long game and IR would just add to it.
(goddamn it, I wasn't logged in) The official rule: Strike Zone is the area over home plate, the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the knee cap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball. What if the robot can't see the top of my pants? (My shirt is loose and blouses over) What if my shoulders are angled? (Where's the 'top'?) What if I have loose pants and a locked knee stance? (Where's my knee, and thus the hollow below the cap?) When does the robot determine the boundaries of the zone? (If it's at the windup, I'll crouch during it then stand up. If it's as the pitch comes in, I'll squat on high strikes) A living, breathing umpire makes all these subjective decisions on every pitch. There's no way to trick the umpire into giving you a smaller or undefined strike zone. You have to keep umpires, even if there's instant replay. For another example: on a large fraction of 6-4-3 and 4-6-3 double plays, the infielder making the play at second base doesn't actually tag the bag. Umpires are very generous on the player touching the base on the turn. Relying on a robot to make that call would be incredibly disruptive with the way that call has been made for over a century.
To comment on a point you made on the double play, the umpires allow the player to not touch the base to avoid injury from the incoming base runner. In the umpires judgment, the player would need to have been able to touch the base. Players, umpires, and managers all agree on this point and would rather short cut the touching of the base than risk a serious injury to a player.
The problems with the TV Networks "pitch zone" is that they are 2 dimensional, do not change for each batter, and the TV viewer has trouble seeing the true motion of the pitch. The strike zone covers all of home plate, including depth. Many pitchers use "back door" breaking balls/sliders to try and hit the very back side of the strike zone. In the "pitch zone" these would look like a ball, when in fact it crossed the plate in the zone. Also, the strike zone changes height for each batter as defined in the rules as the batter waits for the pitch. These "pitch zone" displays never do. Lastly, pitch movement is hard to pick up on television, especially when depth is involved. Pitches can curve around the strike zone and appear to be strikes as well as curve into the back of the strike zone. It is hard to tell from a single camera.
Hating the ump is not the “fun: part of the game – it’s a defense mechanism called Self Serving Bias.
Remember, the fan is the “10th player” – they contribute to the success or failure of the game. When the picture pitches and fails, the fan has two choices.
Rationally ascribe the failure to their team – and thus themselves – and recognize that they are a failure. Or they can protect their ego and blame the Ump.