Gymnastics’ Latest Twist? Robot Judges That See Everything

Thanks to all this, Watanabe explained, no longer would gymnasts — many of whom, he noted, had started gymnastics as young as age 3 and had trained competitively for more than a decade — risk having their efforts unceremoniously wasted by human error or interference.

“This is a step toward the challenge of justice through technology,” Watanabe said.

The debut of such technology at the biggest gymnastics meet outside the Olympics represented a meaningful milestone in a sport periodically marred by judging controversies and often wracked with questions about political influence in scoring decisions.

For all the grand language, and for all the big-picture prophesying it has inspired about the future of sports — baseball is already experimenting with robot umpires, and tennis is starting to expand electronic line-calling — the steps unveiled in Stuttgart were preliminary, and fairly subtle.

In gymnastics, at least, humans very much remain in control. For now.

At the world championships, the artificial intelligence system instead has served a supporting role, available to judges to confirm difficulty scores in two circumstances: in the event of inquiries (when gymnasts formally challenge the judges’ score) and blocked scores (when there is a large deviation between the sets of judges). And the technology, officially, remains limited to a few events: pommel horse, rings and men’s and women’s vault.

Source: The New York Times

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