One of the biggest pieces of wisdom we receive talks to how embracing change is so important in our lives. This is the case for a much more important reason than you can imagine. Embracing change isn’t just about evolving into a better individual. Instead, it’s also a lot about addressing the urgent issue of stagnation. If we refrain from shaking things up, we risk making ourselves and our surroundings stale, which can be devastating in lot of different ways. Hence, you see the world trying to replenish itself by making forays all over the place. Now, even though these forays mostly happen in varying shapes and forms, one theme that has been dominating all our attempts lately is of technology. Apart from offering us an expansive avenue to grow on a personal and societal level, technology consistently ensures that we achieve our objectives in a rather meaningful way. Such a dynamic does everything to encourage us in terms of putting all our bets on this ingenious creation. In fact, with the world already well-versed around the tech principles, we are currently witnessing an increasingly innovative usage of technology. Granted, the results so far haven’t been picture perfect, but they do give you great hope for the future. Inspired by a similar optimism, the soccer fraternity now plans on making a unique tech-centric bid that will change the sport forever.
According to BBC, FIFA, the global governing body of Soccer, is testing out a new semi-automated offside technology, which tracks the player’s limb movement to make more accurate offside judgements. Aided by the footage from a dozen cameras in the stadium, this technology basically functions within the premise of extracting real-time data, therefore enabling referees to make quick and smart decisions. If numbers put-forth by BBC are to be believed, you can use the said setup to collect around 29 data points for each player 50 times in a second. At the moment, referees turn to VAR (video assistant referee) technology for making a call on close situations, but the limitations that came in play with VAR continue to spell huge controversies on every other matchday.
“We are aware the process to check offsides can take longer [than other decisions], especially when it is very tight. We are also aware that the positioning of the lines may not be 100-percent accurate,” said Pierluigi Collina, FIFA’s Chief Referring Officer, when asked about VAR.
To analyze how efficient it can be under strenuous game conditions, FIFA will deploy the new semi-automated offside technology at 2021 Arab Cup in Qatar. If the results are up to the mark, we can very well expect to see it at the World Cup next year.