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Robotics Technology

Baseball Players Want Robots To Be Their Umps (technologyreview.com) 99

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The sports world has been dealing with the human error of referees and umpires for decades -- it's pretty much tradition at this point. But with technology that can assess the game more accurately, some athletes are ready to push the people calling balls and strikes off the field in favor of technology. From a report: On Tuesday, Chicago Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist, one of the most vocal supporters of turning over baseball rulings to software, used an argument with the umpire as a chance to advocate for a change in the league. The comment reinvigorated a long-standing debate over automation in sports. You're out! As you watch baseball on television, a graphic is often overlaid on the action that shows in real time whether a pitch is a ball or a strike. But human umps are still making the calls on the field based on nothing but their own eyes. Increasingly, viewers and players would rather have the technology take over.
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Baseball Players Want Robots To Be Their Umps More

Baseball Players Want Robots To Be Their Umps

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  • Seems reasonable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:22PM (#57145946) Journal
    Seems reasonable ... we want the game play to be human, but mechanical tasks like measuring what was where when, why not automate them?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      With how many sportsball games have had the instant replay contradict the refumperee's call on the play, I can see many teams wanting unemotional, tireless judgings.

      I can also see a few teams who absolutely do not want automated game condition judgements, for reasons I will not explain in detail.

      • Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Informative)

        by E-Rock ( 84950 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:55PM (#57146188) Homepage

        This isn't even going to instant replay. It's a real-time overlay of the pitch that shows if it's a strike or not. The ump is very often wrong. The announcers don't even skip a beat, they just say, he's calling strikes a little outside tonight.

        I think Baseball is hella-boring, but this is cool enough that you should check it out. If you scrub through this you can see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6EDJ7IHfGE

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          My son plays Little League. The umpires are essentially volunteers, they get a little training, a little cash for each game, and a free hot dog and soda from the snack booth. As the game drags on, their strike zones will get wider. They want to get home too. They, like the rest of us, are very fallible.

          And that is part of the game. The team that recognizes a widening strike zone and is able to adjust and adapt to it will have an advantage.

          Even in a technological sport like NASCAR, not ever vehicle is i

    • Professional sports for good or for bad, isn't about straight skill. Yes skill is needed to be play on such a level. But there is a statistic plan for a lot of these actions. Where causing fouls, can help reposition the team to a better location.

      Having a individual missing such a call adds to the complexity of the action. Failing to call a foul may mean the game would continue on, or the intentional foul strategy may fail. A robot making such a calls would change the nature of the game, from making an "ac

    • we want the game play to be human

      Speak for yourself. I would prefer to watch a fully robotic competition.

      Maybe we can have a separate league for robots, like the old Negro Leagues.

  • That's a terrible idea (Score:4, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:23PM (#57145954)
    half the fun of a baseball game is bad calls from the Umpire. Next thing you know they'll wanna replace the beer and hotdogs.

  • Think they can modify one of those Boston Dynamics mules to hit a baseball coming in at 100mph?

    • Think they can modify one of those Boston Dynamics mules to hit a baseball coming in at 100mph?

      Now that would be cool. And put a computer controlled pitching machine on the mound. It could do analysis on the batter and throw the most appropriate pitch. We can probably replace the hotdog and beer venders with drones driven by an app. Faster delivery. The frigging organ guy has gotta go. Pandora can do that shit.

  • On Tuesday, Chicago Cubs second baseman Ben Zobrist, one of the most vocal supporters of turning over baseball rulings to software, used an argument with the umpire as a chance to advocate for a change in the league.

    Or he was just letting off some frustration and saying the ump sucked. Unless you are also going to argue that this guy [nbcsports.com] thinks umps should be replaced by trash cans.

  • I think we should have robots as players (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:39PM (#57146050)
    Since they're all juiced up anyway. The game has become a contest of who has access to the best 'roids.

  • Part of baseball is the human factor - its the same reason they don't allow instant replay like in football - no second guessing umpires.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Part of baseball is the human factor - its the same reason they don't allow instant replay like in football - no second guessing umpires.

      They do allow limited replays, but the types of plays that can be reviewed is very specific, much more so than in football.

  • Sprite Collision (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Machines are great at determining play-field collisions in 2d. That's, pretty much, what a strike box is. Either the ball is inside or outside the box. Sure the box is moving but it's still not insanely complicated to compute.

    Now talk about the catcher tagging out a runner - you've got a 3d object (the ball) that is usually inside another 3d object (the mitt) that needs to fully touch another 3d object (the runner) within 3d space. Unless you have full coverage of every conceivable angle I'm not sure how yo

    • Re:Sprite Collision (Score:4, Informative)

      by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @05:33PM (#57147070) Homepage

      Machines are great at determining play-field collisions in 2d. That's, pretty much, what a strike box is. Either the ball is inside or outside the box. Sure the box is moving but it's still not insanely complicated to compute.

      Now talk about the catcher tagging out a runner - you've got a 3d object (the ball) that is usually inside another 3d object (the mitt) that needs to fully touch another 3d object (the runner) within 3d space. Unless you have full coverage of every conceivable angle I'm not sure how you can make a reliable call - at least significantly more reliable than an umpire.

      I don't think anyone is requesting to replace umpires completely but rather just for the strikezone. The strikezone is the easiest for computers and the hardest and most error prone for the umpire. Basically, like all other automation, let the computer do what it is good at and the human do what it is good at.

    • Machines are great at determining play-field collisions in 2d. That's, pretty much, what a strike box is.

      It is a 3D box. The top and bottom are based on the batter's dimensions. The horizontal dimensions are the five sides of home plate. Just because the TV shows a 2D rectangle doesn't mean it's a fact.

  • How about a halfway approach (Score:5, Interesting)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @02:56PM (#57146194)

    Give the umpires something along the lines of Google glasses that overlay the baseball strike zone in real time like the TV coverage?

  • Apparently athletes aren't any better educated or informed about the actual, non-hype, non-media-fiction driven capabilities of so-called 'AI', otherwise they'd know that you could not rely on it to make a call any better than a human umpire could make, not even close in fact.

    People, could we please stop thinking that 'AI' solves everything?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      Nobody wants AI to do anything here whatsoever, nor has that even been mentioned. This is about using sensors or at most computer vision. This stuff is very practical and the technology already exists. The problem is that a human is being used as a sensor and a human being is not that good as a sensor. So why not use a sensor? Intelligence has nothing to do with it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nnet ( 20306 )
        sensors can't interpret.
        • You're still going to need umpires to make calls on the rules, etc. Safe? Out? That's not really something that is easy to automate. But the strike zone is like using computer vision systems for line calls in tennis. It's in or it's out, and computer vision is pretty good at doing that. You don't have the situation (as often in team sports) where a crowd can form and block the view (think of a pile in football).

    • otherwise they'd know that you could not rely on it to make a call any better than a human umpire could make, not even close in fact.

      With appropriately placed high-frame-rate cameras (two) and a simple modification to player uniforms, it would be almost trivial to build an efficient, accurate strike/ball detecting system. The question is very simple: "did, at any time, the ball (spherical white object) pass through the 3-dimensional space defined by planes parallel to the ground at two marked spots on a batter and the five-sided polygon on the ground?"

      Using the same overhead camera the detection of "strike by failed swing" could also be

  • Exaggeration (Score:2, Informative)

    by Brett Buck ( 811747 )

    Zobrist's comment was a typical smart-alec comment about a call he didn't like, not a serious call for the new system. Sort like "hey, did you lose your white cane" or "how did you make it to the yard without your seeing-eye dog"?

        He got tossed for arguing balls/strikes and showing up the unpire, this sort of thing is 150ish years old.

  • I think I'd be most satisfied with a kind of compromise, in which the home plate umpire had a small wireless device he held in his hand (perhaps in a uniform pocket) that gave him the ball/strike result as determined by the same Pitch f/x video system used now to grade umpire performance.

    Like most modern wireless devices, at the umpire's discretion it could be set to a visual display of ball/strike, or some type of haptic or vibration indication -- one buzz for a ball, two for a strike, perhaps. The umpire

  • The robot Umpire just received a Windows Update.

    Umpires make mistakes. That's part of the came. You want a computer to call it, play on the console of your choice.

    People and players will still disagree with the calls. Just like so many disagree with the radar gun the cop recorded them speeding with.

  • *You don't argue balls and strikes.*

    It's part of the game. Let it be. Half the charm of baseball is the old-timey aspect.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      *You don't argue balls and strikes.*

      It's part of the game. Let it be. Half the charm of baseball is the old-timey aspect.

      And that's because, until PitchF/X [wikipedia.org] came along a few years ago, umpires sucked at calling balls and strikes - that rule was put in place because they sucked at it. And MLB didn't really care - no one could really see but the players, so MLB just banned arguing about it.

      There's no charm as shitty officiating that the sports league doesn't care enough about to fix.

      But then TV came along - with more and more cameras capturing the games as the years passed. The crappy umpiring began to be exposed. I'm looking [youtube.com]

  • But I gotta say - the biggest impact video review* has is adding further delay to an already-slow game.

    On the topic at hand... I'm all for it. The hardware is already in place at all major league - and many AAA - stadiums. And it's been known for a long time that umps' strike zones don't reflect the official strike zone - with left handed batters, for instance, the vast majority of balls 1-4 inches outside the strike zone on the "away" side still get called strikes.

    Sure, they "review" the ump's performances

  • I don't think this will put an end, or even a noticeable reduction in players disputing calls. They'll just shift to criticising the software, calling in experts to nit pick the code and any algorithms it uses. They'll dispute that the hardware is properly set up, there will be cases when they can claim that the cameras were not properly placed to make a valid call in some situations. Same thing for the fans. It will *really* get messy if different ballparks use software and hardware systems. Then you see

  • Title says it all - Tennis has done it for many years... and it's been hugely successful. No reason why baseball can't do the same...

  • i can see it now (Score:3)

    by kaatochacha ( 651922 ) on Friday August 17, 2018 @03:59PM (#57146580)

    Players: We want automated umpires. They're more accurate and reliable.
    League: No.
    Players: robble robble robble strike robble.
    League: OK, You have automated umpires. We're also automating the players.
    Players: Why?
    League: they're more accurate and reliable.

  • Because it's only a misdemeanor to smash a robot to bits when it ticks you off. Not the same for humans.

  • A) There is an accurate computer system for judging balls and strikes. The "overlay" by the broadcasters is not it. That box doesn't even change size for the height of the batter.

    B) I'm an umpire. Computers should call balls & strikes.
     

  • No good excuse why it isn't already.

    Sorry, but there is no "old-timey charm" when the calls are blatantly wrong against you.

  • Think about it! How much less interesting would films like The Mighty Ducks series be if the referees could be truly considered impartial!

  • "It looks like you're trying to throw a no-hitter. Would you like 'help' with that?"

  • I don't really have a dog in this fight. However, it seems to me that logically human umpires should continue in their traditional roles. The sport of baseball is like 130 years-old and comparisons are made regularly comparing players and games in history with those today. Unless the same conditions exist today as in the past, it becomes no longer possible to make comparisons with historic games or players. Is accuracy really that important? It is, after all, only a game.

  • I remember reading, maybe in "Veeck as in Wreck," or maybe "Ball Four," about one umpire who tended to make first-base calls by watching the runner and listening for the sound of the ball hitting the first-baseman's glove. The players caught on to this, and the first-baseman would slap his glove just before the ball got there to fool the ump into calling close plays "out."

    On the other side, an umpire from the 70s and 80s published an autobiography in which he bragged about deliberately trying to distract b

  • What is lost here is that umpires are not making unforced errors in ball and strike calls. Catchers at the major league level can be very skilled at manipulating the umpire's perception of pitch location. It is called "pitch framing." It is sort of like pitchers asking for the threads on the baseball to be white instead of red so that batters cannot pick up ball spin. You are changing the game to remove a skill the opposing player has from the game. You better bet that a lot of batters swing more with 2 str

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