Robot referee, high school baseball field… ‘Stop the entrance exam corruption’
The automatic ball strike system (robot referee) introduced to prevent corruption in the entrance examination was put into real high school baseball games.
The Korea Baseball Softball Association piloted the automatic ball strike system in two matches in the round of 16 of the 2023 Shinsegae E-Mart Cup National Tournament held at Mokdong Stadium in Seoul on the 3rd.
A robot referee is a system in which a machine judges the ball.
A camera installed in the stadium grasps the trajectory 메이저놀이터and impact point of the ball in real time, determines a strike-ball, and delivers the ball judgment to the referee through a
In the match, the referee judged the ball directly without listening to the decision of the robot referee to check whether the system was working properly.
Instead, it was piloted by giving each team a chance to read the ball decision three times.
In the first game of the day, Masan Yongmago-Saego-go, Masan Yongmago asked for reading three times and Segogo twice, so the ball decisions were changed.
In the second match between Gyeongbuk High School and Gwangju Dongseong High School, Gwangju Dongseong High School requested a reading, but the centrifugal decision was maintained.
An official from the Korea Baseball Softball Association said, “In the first game, there seems to be a slight difference between the strike zone the referee thought and the robot referee’s zone.” Requests for judgment readings have decreased,” he said.
From the 4th match, the robot referee will operate normally.
The referee must decide the ball according to the decision of the robot referee, and neither team can raise an objection.
According to the decision of the Korea Baseball Softball Association, the robot referee’s strike zone was set at 101.31 cm high at the top, 42.88 cm at the bottom, 64.87 cm wide at the front and left and 72.1 cm wide at the back.
This is about one ball wider on the left and right than the robot referee strike zone set in the Futures League, a professional baseball league, and the height is slightly lower.
The strike zone of the robot referee can be set by the developer, Sports2I, by inputting an execution value into the system.
“There was no major error in today’s game,” said Park Yoo-na, team leader of Sports2I, in a phone call with Yonhap News Agency. said.
The reason why the Korea Baseball Softball Association hastened to introduce a robot referee is to resolve the distrust in ball judgment in amateur baseball and to eliminate problems such as irregularities in the entrance examination.
In the past, in high school baseball, there was strong distrust in the strike-ball decision, and many conflicts and misunderstandings arose.
Accordingly, the association decided to introduce a robot referee and held a demonstration on the 28th of last month at Daejeon Hanwha Life Insurance Eagles Park for high school leaders, officials, and the media.
Lee Joon-seong, director of the Korea Baseball Softball Association, said, “We expect that the distrust that has prevailed so far will disappear to some extent with the introduction of robot referees.”
The robot referee was the first to be introduced in the American professional baseball independent league in 2019. The American professional baseball major league aims to introduce it in 2024.
In domestic professional baseball, robot referees have been operating in the Futures League since August 2020.
The timing of the introduction of the KBO League 1st team stage is undecided. An official from the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) said, “We are continuing to review it.”