Cameras, sensors, and 3D body scans: All the tech helping eliminate blown calls

FIFA and other worldwide soccer agencies have made their position on the subject clear: They want the big errors gone, sure, but those inches also matter a lot. Elements of this year’s setup are similar to the 2022 World Cup, but with upgrades. Hawk-Eye remains the event’s optical tracking provider, with its computer vision system capturing over two dozen skeletal points on each player at all times. The tracking system uses 16 high-resolution cameras this time around compared to 12 in 2022, FIFA director of innovation Johannes Holzmüller says. And like in 2022, that optical data will be combined with advanced sensors inside the ball itself. Kinexon, a leader in the sports wearables space, will again be providing the match ball’s digital brain. This time it will include an ultrawide-band and IMU sensor setup (including both an accelerometer and gyroscope, the latter of which is vital for capturing ball spin) that tracks the ball’s precise location and any distinct touches, recording those data points 500 times per second. The 2022 version of the ball sensor sat suspended in the center of the ball’s interior, supported by a string-based sling made by Adidas, which also makes the ball itself. This time, though, Adidas has created a small bladder to hold the sensor that’s placed along the inside wall of the ball. “It’s vulcanized inside the bladder with a little plastic pouch,” says Maximillian Schmidt, Kinexon’s cofounder and managing director. “That vulcanization is just way more stable than those strings, which had hooks that could break easier.” Placing the sensor along the ball’s interior wall instead of the center, however, requires some counterbalancing so the added weight on one side of the ball doesn’t make it wobble. While Schmidt says the entire setup weighs just 13 grams, his team had to calibrate everything to ensure every touch or movement of the ball is tracked evenly. And because the sensor now sits right at a point where it could be kicked directly, more robust impact testing was a key part of the process. Combined, these optical and in-ball tracking systems will capture every nuance of all 104 World Cup games. But it’s the high-tech assist borrowed from the world of virtual reality that will make them, somehow, even more accurate. In another effort to reduce wasted time from reviews, VAR will now send immediate alerts to sideline officials for obvious, promptly detectable offside decisions, stopping play right away. This differs from past arrangements that allowed play to continue after the violation, only stopping the action later if a notable event like a goal or a penalty took place. Holzmüller says his team is confident that the upgrades to the VAR system’s accuracy will allow for the correct call to be made more often, even on especially nuanced decisions, like “when there’s only one toe offside.” While the vast majority of offside plays can be spotted by watching slowed-down broadcast footage in video replays, a handful of infractions (or non-infractions) occur at the precise moment between video frames. Despite the rarity of this problem, FIFA is dead set on solving it: Holzmüller says a combination of the 3D scans and ball-tracking data—which by capturing positions 500 times per second can produce higher-resolution data than video’s 60 frames per second—will supplement the video footage to provide the most complete picture possible. Maybe the most interesting feature of the digital twin tech is a “3D goalkeeper view” within VAR. This visualizer can show the goalie’s point of view and, using the system’s digital inputs, determine if an attacking player in an offside position interfered with the keeper. This interference has long been illegal in soccer, but the number of players and size of the field have made it hard to call accurately. Hu points out the wide array of possible uses for digital twin technologies across sports, from officiating applications like these to athlete health and performance. As models become more powerful and computing costs drop, they’ll only improve. It’s fair to wonder if the juice is truly worth the squeeze for gaining an inch or two of resolution on certain rare calls. Holzmüller readily admits these advances, and all the technical and financial legwork that comes with them, might only change a few calls throughout the entire tournament. From FIFA’s perspective, though, there’s no question of its value when it comes to arguably the world’s biggest sporting event. “We have to bring the best technology to the World Cup,” he says. “That’s our goal.” This story originally appeared on wired.com