ALBAWABA - The high anticipation for the upcoming World Cup is shared not only by fans but also by a myriad of tech companies and enthusiasts as the contest is set to feature more than a few AI-driven new technologies.
In this article, we will be breaking down the top new technologies that will be implemented for the teams, officials, and fans, starting with the big one: Football AI Pro.
Football AI Pro
This new technology is similar to already existing generative AIs, however, it will be tracking more than 2,000 football-related metrics, such as tactical transitions and player movements as well as hundreds of millions of data points, with the ability to generate charts, texts, and 3D graphs; it is set to give teams with modest budgets access to top-tier data equal to that of the big budget teams.
3D VAR
The next big one is 3D VAR, which is a supplemental technology for the already existing VAR (Video Assistant Referee) technology, where it fully models all players participating in the competition to give fully-fledged 3D renditions of events to increase referee call accuracy.
The technology was developed by Lenovo in partnership with FIFA, where all the players were digitally scanned prior to the tournament, along with data from tracking cameras to include players’ body dimensions, postures, and positioning in real time, giving referees and fans a highly-immersive visual playback of calls such as offsides and penalties.
AI-Stabilized Referee Cameras
Further benefiting referee calls in the upcoming competition comes the next technology which is ‘AI-Stabilized referee-view cameras’. While not new, body cameras are still seen as a niche technology within the world of football, however they are set to get their shot at becoming mainstream in the upcoming World Cup.
The main issue holding the cameras back in the past was the blurry footage they provided as referees run up and down the field of play during the game, new AI implementations are looking to put the issue to rest with AI stabilizations to the camera feed; providing a clearer image of the referee’s point of view during calls and play.
AI-Referee Feedback
Along with the AI body cameras comes the ‘AI Referee Feedback’ where referees in the competition will receive automated real-time feedback by AI during play; where AI systems instantly process the match data and give calls to referees such as “offside” or “no foul” through their earpieces, further eliminating human error, and indeed, human participation from the beautiful game.
Fan tech: Digital Venues and unified NFC cards
The last two technologies on this list deal with the fans and the venues, starting with venue ‘digital twins’ where each venue will have an identical AI digital copy, including the crowds, officials, and players in the venue bringing stadium logistics into another level of planning and monitoring, allowing effective crowd-flow control and monitoring.
And the last of the headline-grabbing new technologies in the upcoming competition are unified NFC fan cards, a physical-to-digital fan ID program where fans get an NFC card at the stadium, which pairs with their smartphone via a tap, unlocking venue-specific navigations, personalized merch options, and AR (Augmented Reality) video content tailored to the specific match they’re watching.
With the implementation of all these new technologies comes the question; will these new technologies dramatically alter the game, or will they simply enhance what already exists in a way that is appreciated by teams and fans alike?
