ABSRACT

In many sports there are many decisions which cannot be determined by human
interfaces. So we need to use different types of technologies to determine the decisions
perfectly .one of most prominently used technology is HAWK-EYE technology. It is used
in sports like cricket, tennis, snookers and in some games. It is a technology where we can
determine speed, deviation of ball from actual track etc. Hawk- Eye as the most innovative
technology provider in sports broadcasting and is a development that will reinforce the
group's presence and influence. It is primarily used by the majority of television networks to
track the trajectory of balls in flight.

Hawk-Eye is a complex computer system used in cricket, tennis and other sports to
visually track the path of the ball and display a record of its most statistically likely path as a
moving image. In some sports, like tennis, it is now part of the adjudication process. It is also
used in some instances to predict the future path of a ball in cricket. Hawk-Eye uses six or
more computer-linked television cameras situated around the cricket field of play. The
computer reads in the video in real time, and tracks the path of the cricket ball on each camera.
These six separate views are then combined together to produce an accurate 3D representation
of the path of the ball.
 INDEX
CONTENTS PAGE NO

List of Figures i

CHAPTER 1 1-8

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Literature Survey 4

1.2 Principle of Hawk-eye 7

CHAPTER 2 9-14
STEP BY STEP DETAILS OF THE HAWKEY SYSTEM

2.1 The cameras 9

2.2 Preparation before starting to process 10

2.3 Core Image Processing Job 11

2.4 Geometric Algorithm 12

2.5 3D position of the ball in space 13

2.5.1 Putting frames at various times together 14

2.5.2 Tracking the ball at various instants 14

2.5.3 Predicting the flight or trajectory of the ball 14

CHAPTER 3
DECISION MAKING MACHINES 15-20

CHAPTER 4

APPLICATIONS OF HAWKEYE SYSTEM 21-33

4.1 LBW decisions 22

4.2 Wagon Wheels 26

4.3 Pitch Maps 26

4.4 DeSpin 27
4.5 RailCam 27

4.6 Beehives 28

4.7 Line calls in Tennis 29

4.8 Prediction of Path in Snookers 32

4.9 Computer Games 33

CHAPTER 5 34-37

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND VIRTUAL REALITIES

5.1 Measurement Error 34

5.2 Hawk-eye culture 35

CHAPTER 6 38-39
PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING

CHAPTER 7 40
CONCLUSION 40
REFERENCES 41
 LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO DESCRIPTION PAGE NO

1.1 Top level view of hawkeye system 5

1.1 Princple of Triangulation 7
2.1 Position of the cameras around the field 9
2.2 Determining the 3D position of the ball 12
2.3 Image taken from camera 2 13
4.1 Detected trajectory of ball 22
4.2 However, the point of impact is accurately known
. and one can see exactly where the batsman was hit. 23
4.3 A two-dimensional schematic of a potential lbw situation. 25
4.4 Wagon wheel generated by hawkeye 26
4.5 Pitch maps as shown by hawkeye 26
4.6 Beehive of a left hander as shown by hawkeye 28
4.7 Trajectory of the tennis ball as shown by the hawkeye 29
4.8 Path of the cue ball as shown by hawkeye 32
4.9 The trajectory of the ball shown by hawkeye in
Brain Lara Cricket 33

i
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

In the past few decades, skepticism about umpiring follies hasn‘t abated. In the world of
sports, where stakes are increasing by every passing minute and an erroneous line-call can mean
change of fortunes, there is an increasing reliance on technology to ensure that all arbitrations are
unbiased.

The HAWKEYE is one of the most commonly used technologies in the game of cricket
today. It has been put to a variety of uses, such as providing a way to collect interesting statistics,
generate very suggestive visual representations of the game play and even helping viewers to
better understand the umpiring decisions, especially in the case of LBWs. While the system
provides for things which we see every day on television, there is very impressive technology
going into it, which many of us are oblivious to. In this paper, we attempt to explain how the
technology works, in detail.

The game of cricket has attained great commercial importance and popularity over the
past few years. As a result, there has been felt a need to make the game more interesting for the
spectators and also to try and make it as fair as possible. The component of human error in
making judgments of crucial decisions often turns out to be decisive. It is not uncommon to see
matches turning from being interesting to being one sided due to a couple of bad umpiring
decisions. There is thus a need to bring in technology to try and minimize the chances of human
error in such decision making.

Teams across the world are becoming more and more professional with the way they play
the game. Teams now have official strategists and technical support staff which help players to
study their past games and improve. Devising strategies against opponent teams or specific
players is also very common in modern day cricket. All this has become possible due to the
advent of technology. Technological developments have been harnessed to collect various data
very precisely and use it for various purposes.

The HAWKEYE is one such technology which is considered to be really top notch in
cricket. The basic idea is to monitor the trajectory of the cricket ball during the entire duration of
play. This data is then processed to produce life like visualizations showing the paths which the
ball took. Such data has been used for various purposes, popular uses including the LBW
decision making software and colorful wagon wheels showing various statistics. This paper
attempts to explain the intricate details of the technology which goes behind the HAWKEYE.

1
 We first start off with a general overview of the system and an outline of the challenges that
we might face, then move on to the details of the technology and end with various applications
where one sees this technology being put to use.

Not only in the game of cricket, has Hawkeye found its importance in the game of tennis. It
all started in Serena Williams' quarterfinal loss to Jennifer Capriati at the 2004 US Open, many
crucial calls were contested by Williams, and TV replays demonstrated that some were indeed
erroneous. Though the calls themselves were not reversed, the chair umpire Mariana Alves was
removed from consideration for further matches at that year's U.S. Open. These errors
prompted talks about line calling assistance especially as the Auto-Ref system was being tested
by the U.S. Open at that time and was shown to be very accurate.

In late 2005 Hawk-Eye was tested by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) in New
York City and was passed for professional use. Hawk-Eye reported that the New York tests
involved 80 shots being measured by the ITF's high speed camera, a device similar to MacCAM.
During an early test of the system during an exhibition tennis tournament in Australia (seen on
local TV), there was an instance when the tennis ball was shown as "Out", but the accompanying
word was "In". This was explained to be an error in the way the tennis ball was shown on the
graphical display as a circle, rather than as an ellipse. This was immediately corrected.
Hawk-Eye has been used in television coverage of several major tennis tournaments,
including Wimbledon, the Stella Artois at Queens, the Australian Open, the Davis Cup and
the Tennis Masters Cup. The US Open Tennis Championship announced they would make
official use of the technology for the 2006 US Open where each player receives two challenges
per set. It is also used as part of a larger tennis simulation implemented
by IBM called PointTracker.
The 2006 Hopman Cup in Perth, Western Australia, was the first elite-level tennis
tournament where players were allowed to challenge point-ending line calls, which were then
reviewed by the referees using Hawk-Eye technology. It used 10 cameras feeding information
about ball position to the computers. In March 2006, at the Nasdaq-100 Open, Hawk-Eye was
used officially for the first time at a tennis tour event. Later that year, the US Open became the
first grand-slam event to use the system during play, allowing players to challenge line calls.
The 2007 Australian Open was the first grand-slam tournament of 2007 to implement
Hawk-Eye in challenges to line calls, where each tennis player on Rod Laver Arena was allowed
2 incorrect challenges per set and one additional challenge should a tiebreaker be played. In the
event of an advantage final set, challenges were reset to 2 for each player every 12 games, i.e. 6
all, 12 all. Controversies followed the event as at times Hawk-Eye produced erroneous output. In
2008, tennis players were allowed 3 incorrect challenges per set instead. Any leftover challenges
didn't carry over to the next set. Once, in one of Amélie Mauresmo's matches, she challenged a

2
ball that was called in, Hawk-Eye showed the ball was out by less than a millimeter but the
verdict was called in. As a result, the point was replayed and Mauresmo didn't lose an incorrect
challenge.

Hawk-Eye has also been proposed for use in Association football but has yet to win
general approval from the major governing bodies of the sport. The Football Association,
English football's governing body, has declared the system as "ready for inspection by FIFA",
after tests suggested that the results of a goal-line incident could be relayed to the match referee
within half a second (IFAB, the governing body for the Laws of the game, insists on goals being
signalled immediately i.e. within five seconds).
FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke admits Hawk-Eye goal-line technology will be
considered if the system's developers guarantee a 100% success rate. Football's governing body
has previously been reluctant to use video technology to settle on-pitch disputes. Testing of the
Hawk-Eye's suitability in football is expected to continue and there could be a trial run in
the Premier League, according to Dr. Paul Hawkins, who invented the system. "We will speak to
FIFA over the next week or so to get the detail, but it looks positive I think," Hawkins said.
At the World Snooker Championship 2007, the BBC used Hawk-Eye for the first time in
its television coverage to show player views, particularly in the incidents of potential snookers. It
has also been used to demonstrate intended shots by players when the actual shot has gone awry.
It is now used by the BBC at every World Championship, as well as some other major
tournaments. The BBC uses the system sporadically, for instance in the 2009 Masters at
Wembley the Hawk-Eye was at most used once or twice per frame. In contrast to tennis, the
Hawk-Eye is never used in snooker to assist referees' decisions.

Sport has changed as a result of television replays whether one likes it or not. For example, at
least some television viewers find that soccer is being spoiled for them by the number of blatantly
incorrect refereeing decisions visible on television replays. Sports deci- sion aids, including
television replays (as in rugby union), have a valuable role to play in undoing some of this damage.
But the exact way all these things are used depends on a prior understanding of the relationship
between what these devices can do and the way normal human judgment works.

3
1.1 LITERATURE SURVEY

Cricket is a ball game played within a predetermined area. A system comprising of

video cameras mounted at specific angles can be used to take pictures. These pictures are
then used to locate the position of the ball. The images are then put together and
superimposed on a predetermined model to form a complete visualization of the trajectory
of the ball. The model includes, in this case, the pitch, the field, the batsmen and fielders etc.
For this to be possible, we need to sample images at a very high rate and thus need efficient
algorithms which can process data in real time. Such technologies are widely used today in
various sports such as Tennis, Billiards which also fall in the category of ball games played
within a restricted area. Our discussion will mostly contain applications which specific to
the game of cricket, however in some cases, we will mention how similar techniques are
applied in other games.

There are various issues which crop up when one tries to design and implement such a
system. In the game of cricket, the general issues are:

• The distance at which the cameras see the pitch and the ball are dependent
on the dimensions of each ground and can vary greatly.
• Just the individual images don‘t help too much; for the system to be of practical use,
one must ensure that it can track the 3D trajectory of the ball with high precision. In
order to get this accuracy, the field of view of each camera should be restricted to a
small region – this means one needs more cameras to get the coverage of the entire
field.
• Fielders and spectators might obstruct the camera‘s view of the ball and the ball
might get ‗lost‘ in its flight in one or more of the cameras. The system should be
robust enough to handle this, possibly by providing some redundancy.
• The ball might get confused with other similar objects – for instance, with flying
birds or the shadow of the ball itself. The image processing techniques used need to
take care of these issues. Luckily, there are techniques which are easy to implement
and are well known to the Image Processing community on the whole, to take care
of these.
• To help in judging LBW calls, the system needs to be made aware of the style of
the batsman – whether he is right or left handed. This is because the rules of LBW
are dependent on the position of the stumps and are not symmetrical about the
middle stump. Thus, the system needs to detect whether a particular ball has
pitched outside the leg stump of a batsman or not.
• To determine the points at which the ball makes contact with the pitch, the
batsmen or other objects is very hard. This is because we don‘t really know these

4
 spots beforehand and the model and the real pictures taken by cameras need to be
merged to give such a view.

We will see how the HAWKEYE technology successfully treats each of these issues and
provides a robust system to be used in practice. The top-level schematic picture of the
system and its various parts is as shown below (each color represents a block of steps which
are related):

Figure1.1: Top level view of hawk-eye system

The figure above shows precisely the steps that are involved in the computation. The

5
process is started with some calibration of the cameras. This is required to deal with the
problem raised in 1 above, about the non-uniform distance of the cameras from the playing
area. After this basic calibration is done and the system is up and running, we can start
processing the video input which we get from the cameras. In each of the images obtained,
the first aim is to find the ball in it. Once this is done, a geometric algorithm is used to look
at multiple images (which are 2D) and then combine them cleverly to get the co-ordinates
of the ball in 3D space. This process is now repeated for multiple times every second
(typically at the rate of 100 times per second). Thus, we have the position of the ball in 3D
space at many moments in every second. The final step is to process these multiple
positions and find a suitable fitting curve which best describes the flight of the ball. As we
have sampled the positions of the ball at very short time intervals, the flight of the ball can
be very accurately determined.

A description of the exact algorithms involved in the entire process will be skipped
here. We instead try to give an intuitive description of each step in great detail, so as to give
the reader a feel of what goes into the system, without plunging into the gory details. Apart
from being so popular in the game of cricket Hawkeye is also used in tennis, football and
snooker presently.

The substance around which this paper turns is an analysis of technical aids designed
to supplement or replace the decision-making of cricket and tennis umpires, football
referees and the like. The device known as Hawk-Eye is used as the principal
illustrative example as it is the most well-known of the commercial systems and, as we
discuss later on, it is currently being used to make decisions in major tennis
competitions. In addition, because it has been used for several years it has a well
developed website and has been the subject of a range of media coverage and one or two
published articles. In what follows, nearly all the material we use in the analysis is drawn
from such sources and so can be readily checked. Aside from some initial inquiries we
were unable to obtain significant information directly from Hawk- Eye Innovations. As
explained below, we discovered toward the end of the analysis that a number of our
questions and proposals had already been put by contributors to newspaper websites. We
cannot find any detailed response to the newspaper queries either, suggesting that our
experience is not unrepresentative.
To gain as much information as we could, we used the major search engines and
data- bases systematically to search popular websites and the academic literature.
Specifically, three people spent a total of about 15 hours searching Google and Google
Scholar (we looked at the first 20 pages that were returned) plus Web of Science (there
were only three, irrelevant, hits) for articles relating to Hawk-Eye (spelt in various
different ways).5 Of the information we uncovered, the most useful was on newspaper
websites, on a discussion site called Cricinfo and on Hawk-Eye Innovations‘ own
website. We also examined the original patent application, which is available online from
the European Patent Office (reference number WO 01/41884). We discovered an article in
Scientific American (Fischetti, 2007) and a recently published analysis of line calls in
tennis (Mather, 2008).

6
 We found only one article about Hawk-Eye in an engineering journal but it was very
hard to access in both senses of the term:6 it has been referred to in the main body of the
paper and we attempt to explain its contents more fully in the paper‘s final note. We do
not know how this paper, which reports development of a device under contract with
Hawk-Eye Innovations, bears on the technology which is currently used but, in any case,
no substantive difference would be made to the analysis if it included more reference to
this paper unless it is true, as the paper implies, that Hawk-Eye takes its television feeds
from existing television network cameras; this would indicate lower camera frame rates
than are discussed in this paper.7
Reliance on public domain data means that our information about how Hawk-Eye
works is not complete. We do our best to warn about the gaps in our knowledge by inserting
through- out the paper the symbol, ―{caveat n}. The ―n part of the symbol is a number
indicating the particular pieces of missing information. These are recast as a series of
questions in note 8, each cross-referenced to the paper by the number.8 The questions in note 8
are a subset of those we would have explored had our research project involved the kind of
interactions with scientists and technologists that have supported our many case studies of
science and technology over the years. Note 8 lists, then, a series of open inquiries that
others might like to pursue.

1.2 PRINCIPLE OF HAWK-EYE

 A Hawk-Eye system is based on the principle of Triangulation.

 Triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by

measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline

Figure1.2: Top level view of hawk-eye system

7
8
 CHAPTER-2

STEP BY STEP DETAILS OF THE HAWKEYE SYSTEM:

In this section, we go into the technical details of the steps involved in the HAWKEYE
system. The process, as done before, can be broken down into the following steps (we will
divide the process into these seemingly disjoint steps so that it is easy to explain the details,
however many of the steps are overlapping):

2.1 The cameras:

Typically, for a cricket field, 6 cameras are used. These cameras are placed around the
field at roughly the places as indicated in the diagram below:

Figure 2.1: Position of the cameras around the field

As one can see, the 6 cameras in use are positioned at 600 roughly from each other.
They are placed high in the stands, so that there is lesser chance of their view being blocked
by the fielders. There are two cameras, one each looking at the wickets directly in sideways
fashion.

These 6 cameras are calibrated according to the distance they are at from the pitch. In
order to get good accuracy, one needs to restrict the view of each camera to a smaller

9
 region. This means each camera image would show a more prominent picture of the ball and
hence the ball will be located more accurately. However, we also need to keep in mind that
the whole field of play has to be covered by just the 6 cameras which are available. This
puts some limitation on how restricted the view of a camera can be. Nevertheless, the
accuracy obtained by using 6 cameras is acceptable to the standards prevalent today.

Some further setting up is essential for the system to work correctly. The cameras
need to be fixed to some frame of reference, which is defined very conveniently in terms of
the wickets on the pitch, and the line joining them. This is useful when we want to use an
automated program to merge images from different cameras to form one 3D image.

Also, to avoid unnecessary computation and make the system more efficient, the
cameras can be operated in active or passive mode. In the passive mode, no imaging is done
and hence the system is more or less completely inactive. The cameras can be triggered into
active mode either by detecting some motion in the vicinity of the pitch, or manually by
some external trigger. In either case, all the cameras are synchronized and go into active
mode simultaneously. The cameras are then designed to stay in the active mode for a fixed
time before going off into passive mode. This action of going into passive mode can be
manually overridden in exceptional cases. The different modes for the cameras are
especially effective for a game like cricket as the game involves significant pauses between
phases of actual play.

As described in 5 in the list of issues, the system needs to know if the batsman is right
or left handed. The front view cameras are used to do this. This information, as previously
said is useful in making LBW decisions and formulating other statistics. For instance, we
commonly see the analysis of a bowler‘s pitching areas done separately for a left and a right
handed batsman.
While this is not a very difficult task to do manually every time the batsman on strike
changes, the system does provide some way of automating it. Once this setting is done, the
cameras are ready to take pictures in their field of view and have them sent to a computer
which processes them.

2.2 Preparation before starting to process:

Additional features might be loaded into the system to enable it to process the data
in a more reliable and useful manner. These might include a statistical generator, which is
used to produce statistics based on the data collected. These are the statistics which we see
on television during and after the match for analysis. Such statistics can also be used by
teams and players to study their game and devise strategies against their opponents.

Indeed, the raw data about the paths of the ball might be too much for any human

10
 to digest and such statistics turn out to be easier to handle and understand. The statistics
generator might also aid in storing data such as the average velocity of the ball. This data
is crucial as it can help the ball detection algorithm to predict the rough location of the ball
in an image given the position in the previous image. Such considerations are useful to
reduce the computations involved in the processing of the data collected from the video
cameras.

Once such additional machinery is setup correctly, we are all set to start collecting data
and start processing it to churn out tangible statistics and visualizations. It might be noted at
this stage that there is some more information which might be required to process the data
correctly. We will point out such things at later points in the report, where it fits in more
appropriately.

2.3 Core Image Processing Job:

This part of the system can be further divided into 3 major parts:

• Identifying pixels representing the ball in each image.

• Applying some geometric algorithm on the set of images at each instant.
• Coming up with the 3D position of the ball in space.

We now explain each of these operations in detail:

To identify the pixels representing the cricket ball in every image taken by each of the
video cameras:

An algorithm is used to find the pixels corresponding to the ball in the image
obtained. The information which is used in order to achieve this is the size and shape of the
ball. It should be noted that the system does not use the color of the ball as that is not really
same throughout the course of a game, nor is it same across all forms of cricket. A blob
detection scheme can be used to detect a round object in the image.

Knowing the approximate size of the ball, we can eliminate other round objects, such
as helmets worn by players. The shadow of the ball also will resemble the ball in shape and
size and thus presents itself as a very viable candidate for a blob representing a group of
pixels corresponding to the ball itself. The position of the sun at the given instant of time and
also information about the position of the ball in previous images is used to make sure this
confusion is avoided. Thus, by taking due care, we can be sure that the round object which
has been located is indeed the cricket ball, which is the object of interest.

After this stage, we have as output, the x and y co-ordinates of the ball in each

11
 image. In some cases, it might be the case that the system is unable to determine the exact
position in some images. At such times, ―Not Found‖ is returned by that particular camera.
One must note at this point that 6 cameras are used to take images. Actually, in the ideal
case one can do the job with just 4 cameras. Thus, we have some redundancy and hence,
can afford to have a bad result from one of the cameras at some points and still produce a
complete picture.

2.4 Geometric Algorithm:

The data of x and y co-ordinates from each camera (or a ―Not Found‖ in some cases,
which is ignored) is obtained by the Geometric Algorithm which is at work inside the
HAWKEYE system. The image taken from each camera is just 2D image and lacks depth.
Now, knowing the exact positions of the cameras in space (with respect to the pitch) and the
x and y co-ordinates of the ball in more than one of the images taken by these cameras, one
can determine accurately the position of the ball in 3D.

Figure 2.2: Determining the 3D position of the ball

Let us consider the simple case in which we assume the cameras to be mounted at
ground level, positioned with their vision parallel to the ground. We wish to get information
about the 3D position of the ball from the positions (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) obtained by
resolving the ball from 2D images from Cameras 1 and 2 shown in the image below. The
ball is actually at the position shown by the red circle, at some height above ground.

The view in the cameras will look something like the one shown below. The view below
shows the picture as seen by Camera 2 in the figure above.

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 In this simplistic scenario, the height of the ball above the ground is given directly
by the y co-ordinate in the images, y1 or y2. Both these values should ideally be equal, but
we might want to take the average in case they are not exactly equal. Now, the one
parameter we need to determine is the depth of the ball as measured by Camera 2. Once we
have that information, we will have all the data to infer the position of the ball in 3D space
with respect to the pitch. Note that we know the positions of the cameras with respect to the
pitch in advance.
Let us assume that the radial angle, as seen from the wickets marked in the figure,
between Camera 1 and Camera 2 is □ and the radius of the field is r. Then, the depth of the
ball as seen from Camera 2 is as follows:

DEPTH = r – ( r cos(α) + lx1l sin(α) )

Figure 2.3: Image taken from camera 2

Thus, we see that knowing the co-ordinates of the ball in two cameras, we can get
the position of the ball in 3D space with respect to one of the cameras and thus, with
respect to the wickets.

In the realistic case, the cameras are mounted high above the ground and thus,
finding the height of the ball above the ground is not as trivial as it was here. One needs to
rotate the axis correctly in order to do the calculations that were simple here as it concerned
only planar geometry. In real life, cricket grounds are not perfectly circular and hence even
that has to be taken into consideration. We do not go into those details here, but just note
that it is standard mathematics to get the 3D co-ordinates of the ball given the information in
two images.

13
2.5 3D position of the ball in space:

The Geometric Algorithm described with the help of an example above provides us
with a ready recipe to find the 3D position of the ball in space. We just use this method and
as a result, now have the position of the ball as captured at that instant, in 3D space, with
respect to any of the reference points we had considered while setting up the system.

2.5.1 Putting frames at various times together:

Now we have the exact position of the ball in 3D space at a given instant of time.
Next, what needs to be done is putting together this data, collected at various time instants
into a single picture which shows us the trajectory of the ball. We can split this part of the
process into two parts. Again, the reader should understand that these parts are very much
related and we split them here in our explanation just to make it easily understandable. The
two parts to this computation are:
(1) Tracking the ball at various instants.
(2) Predicting the flight or trajectory of the ball.

We now present details about each of these steps:

2.5.2 Tracking the ball at various instants:

Suppose the images are taken by cameras at times t0, t1, t2,….,tn during the play of
a single ball. Doing the computation as described above at each time instant ti, 0<i<n, we
will get n points, (xi,yi,zi) say for 0<i<n. Now, on the model that we have built previously
consisting of a picture of the pitch, ground and wickets etc., we plot these n points.

When looked at in their proper sequence, these points tell us about the path followed
by the ball when it travelled during the last ball that was played. With these points plotted in
the 3D space, we can move on to the next and final stage in the processing of a single
delivery, namely, predicting the flight of the ball.

2.5.3 Predicting the flight or trajectory of the ball:

We have n points in space which we know represent the position of the ball at some
particular time instants, which are also known. Now, there is a standard technique, used
commonly in the field of Computer Aided Geometric Design which can be invoked here.
This allows us to draw as good an approximation as required to the original curve, passing
through the given points. This technique gives us a curve which is continuous and

14
differentiable, meaning it is smooth all along, starting at the first point and ending at the last
point among our n points.

This smooth curve is an approximation to the original curve which the ball would have
followed. The more points we can get on the curve and the higher degree of polynomial
basis we choose to use, we will end up with better approximations to the original curve. The
better approximations obviously come at some additional cost – the added cost of
computation of the approximation.
Hence, the system uses some degree such that the computation time is small enough, at the
same time the accuracy is acceptable.

More can be done with the information about the n points. We can also extend the
curve to points which we have not been recorded at all – indeed, it might be the case that
the ball struck the batsman and deflected away, but we want to see where the ball was
headed, particularly to help adjudge LBW cases. This extension uses some basic
mathematics and ensures that the extended curve is also smooth at all points, particularly
at the point from where the extended part starts, that is the last point which we have
recorded among the n points.

During the flight of the ball, it might go through some points which are of special
interest. These include the ball hitting the pitch, the stumps, and the batsman among others.
These points are predicted by superimposing the trajectory which we built, onto the model
that we have fed into the system. It should be noted that there is a possibility that such
critical points may not be recorded in any of the images taken by the system and in such
cases, the reliance is completely on the predicted flight of the ball. Also, for the particular
key-event of the ball striking the batsman, the sideways cameras, which look directly at the
wickets at either end of the pitch, are the most reliable sources.

15
 CHAPTER-3
DECISION MAKING MACHINES
The development of a definition of decision making would be an essay in itself,
hence I will borrow form the National Research Council (2014, p.13) who defines it as "a
process of evaluating information and reaching an actionable policy or strategy." They
also describe a few characteristics of this process, such as the fact that it usually
depends on its context and that most of the times it relies on historical and background
information in addition to the situation that is being observed or experienced. Although
this definition originates from a military point of view and it may seem overly precise,
as military definitions usually are, it can be extended to everyday situations without
much complication. We might not use this terminology but every morning, for example,
we evaluate the situations we expect to encounter during the day (people, places,
weather...) and then choose what to wear, which would fits the actionable policy or
strategy part of the definition. The fact that we are constantly facing decision-making
situations brings as an unsurprising consequence the search for tools that will help in
that regard, simplify the process and ease the burden of the responsibility assumed when
decisions are made. From oracles to scientists, we usually rely on external sources of
information to either make a decision for us or help us reach our own.

During the 1980s, the use of computer systems to aid decision making took the
form of knowledge-based systems (KBS). The design philosophy behind knowledge-
based sys- tems was to bring expert knowledge and artificial intelligence strategies to
create a system that could aid the learning and decision making processes through
knowledge provision via specific queries. Knowledge-based systems were never
conceived as knowledge black boxes but rather as an attempt to emulate and better
understand human cognition processes. As such, KBSs would have to be able to explain
their answers by describing the inner workings of their decision process for every
suggestion made.(Akerkar and Sajja 2010, p.xvii)
These systems underwent a thorough analysis during the late 1980s by the now
extinct Council for Science and Society. In their report, they recognised the potential
usefulness of knowledge-based systems but also pointed out things to be kept in mind
while using them. One of the things they pointed out is the definition of intelligence that
scientists followed in order to design these systems where "[b]eing academics, they saw
intelligence very much in academic terms: the ability to reason, to play games like chess,
and to solve problems, rather than to sing, to dance, or to see."(Council for Science and
Society 1989, p.3). This can be read as an attempt to bring forth how limited
knowledge-based systems can be and to help us understand that their reach can never be
all encompassing but is rather restricted to a very narrow area of application.

16
 A second advice is that even in those areas where this kinds of system can be
helpful, they should be consider only as tools to be used and never as decision-makers
themselves because this would undermine the human authority and responsibility and
they indicate that the only way to be able to achieve this is through the understanding of
how these systems work.

A third caution provided is the fact that albeit when the way the system works is
taken into account and a human has the final verdict in which action should be taken for a
particular situation, the speed and complexity of the certain settings make it impossible
for a person to evaluate all the information available and becomes obliged to confirm the
best suggestion presented by the knowledge-based systems.

Knowledge-based systems never became as widespread as it was expected of them

even during the early 1990s. One reason for this could be their high costs them and their
tailor-made nature(ibid., p.15), rendering them nearly impossible to generalise. Another
reason is the high volume of data that began to be generated during that same decade and
which has been growing exponentially since the start of this century and which would
require a new set of theoretical and practical tools.

Having to deal with apparently overwhelming amounts of information is not a new

thing. Press (2013) places the first awareness of this kind of issue in 1944 when
Wesleyan University Librarian Fremont Rider estimates that by 2040 Yale Library
would have around 200,000,000 volumes, requiring six thousand miles of shelves along
with over six thousand peoples to operate. However, the introduction of the term Big Data
came in 1998 by a Silicon Graphics scientist, John Mashey, in a lecture where he warns of
the growth in storage and increasing expectation of internet users regarding images,
graphics, models, audio and video in an attempt to anticipate the hardware and
software requirements.
Recently Kitchin (2014, p.xv) defined Big Data as "vast quantities of dynamic,
varied digital data that are easily conjoined, shared and distributed across ICT
[information and communication technology] networks, and analysed by a new generation
of data analytics designed to cope with data abundance as opposed to data scarcity." This
definition shows how much the field evolved in 16 years. It is now not only a matter of data
being generated but data that is also dynamic, distributed and, more importantly,
profusely shared; this has been largely enabled by the ubiquity of mobile devices and
internet access. Another reason for the success of Big Data is the fact that many
scientists believe that more data means more information and insight, and "the data,
suitably circumscribed by quantity, correlation, and algorithm, will speak to us,"(Mosco
2014, p.206) but they often forget that correlation does not mean causality but, in fact,
"the vast amount of information that can be brought to bear does not guarantee better
decisions or a more straightforward decision-making process"(National Research

17
 Council 2014, p.5).
Just like with knowledge-based systems, an in-depth investigation towards the
limits and limitations of Big Data was recently made, this time by the National Research
Council (2013). Their report indicates a similar attitude towards decision-making
technology as the one was displayed in 1989 by the Council for Science and Society.
They warn of the limits of the tools, specifically of the statistical tools used since "data
analysis is based on assumptions, and the assumptions underlying many classical data
analysis methods are likely to be broken in massive data sets,"(ibid., p.6) and determine
that "the role of human judgment in massive data analysis is essential, and contributions
are needed from social scientists and psychologists as well as experts in visualization,"
and conclude, in a similar fashion to the conclusions of 1989, that "this judgment needs
to be based on an understanding of statistics and computation"(ibid., p.5). Despite this
analysis and warnings, the fast-paced nature of the developing of these technologies and
the increasing specialisation at the core of their development has led some people to
conclude that "[w]e are increasingly surrounded by ‘black boxes‘, complex constructs
that we do not understand even if they are explained to us." and yet we rely heavily on
their performance in our decision-making (Krogerus, Tschäppeler and Piening 2011,
p.118).
As more data becomes available, it evidence gathers indicating that the collection
and usage of information has been all but naïve. Data is treated as an independent and
objective entity which bears only truth and raw information, forgetting that data exist
within a socio-temporal space and is influenced by the politics, economics and philosophy
that surround it; the technologies and instruments used for their acquisition also influence
the data (Kitchin 2014, p.2); data only exists through human intellect and intention, which
has certain biases and shortcomings that inevitably will form a part of it (Mosco 2014,
p.200).
Algorithms are the second element of Big Data. New ways to analyse massive
amounts of information have been (and are still being) developed. In a similar way to
data, algorithms are thought to be an abstract identity and not usually understood.
However, they are also imbued with an ideological and cultural factor that can present
itself through them in ways that cannot always be anticipated but which could be
critically relevant (Goffey 2008, p.19). People often do not realise that programs can
also have bugs and not work as they are expected. Moreover, according to Kitchin and
Dodge (2011, p.86), software plays a fundamental role in the creation of "societies of
control" by shifting the agents, motives, and applications through which society, its space
and its time are created. It is important to bear these characteristics in mind, since now
more than ever, computer systems are being used to assist decision making in relevant
situations.
There exists a fundamental difference in the way humans and machines make de-
cisions. For people, emotions, social context, and even structures of authority influence
the way in which decisions are taken. These factors, however, are very hard to incorporate

18
 into a machine due to sensing restrictions or, even when modelling is possible, excessive
complexity of the models would required non-finite time or processing resources, which
is impossible to achieve. Another difference is that traditionally, computer scientists have
focused their efforts in the intellectual side of decision making, disregarding the role of
embodiment in human behaviour and the frequent reliance on intuition rather than
rationality (National Research Council 2014, p.5–6,15,23). Rather than an impairment,
this could be considered as an advantage in the sense that machinic decision making
systems could play a complementary role to humans in situations where the pressure or
complexity of a problem can lead them to misjudge a situation and make a wrong
decision; the risk, however, is to rely solely on the machines to make decisions crippling
both the authority of the people and their ability to make adequate decisions.
In the following sections I will explore the Hawk-Eye technology, widely popularised
through cricket and tennis but increasingly used in more sports, to show how the way it is
currently being used might result in spreading a culture where technology is presented as an
unquestionable black box, that supersedes humans in decision making.
The point is made clear in the case of the Federer–Nadal challenge. Under the
Automated Decision Principle, even if we neglect random error and accept that the ball
really was one millimeter IN, it would still have been called OUT because all humans
would see it as OUT. Figure 5 summarizes the way human systematic error could be
reproduced by Hawk-Eye-like devices. On the left of Figure 5 is shown a wicket. To
reproduce the ―benefit of the doubt‖ rule it would only be necessary for Hawk-Eye to
make its decisions on a smaller virtual set of stumps indicated by the shaded box. Balls
predicted to hit the wicket in the area outside that box would count as ―NOT OUT on the
basis of benefit of the doubt. The same result could be produced by giving a high cut- off
point ,such as 99.9 percent to the confidence demanded
before an ―OUT decision was made.33
On the right of Figure 5 is shown a tennis line at the rear of the court with a shaded
area. If it was predicted that the skin of the ball touched this shaded area, the call would
still be ―OUT. Unfortunately, in tennis the matter is more complicated because the size of
the shaded area should depend on the speed of the ball. For example, in the case of a lob
the shaded area would be smaller if our analysis is correct {see caveats}.
The actual decision about how to apply these rules would have to be made by the
various sports‘ governing bodies. How large should the virtual wicket be, or what would
be the correct cut-off point for confidence level in the case of lbw, if the human benefit
of the doubt rule were to be reproduced? To do it properly some observation and analysis
of existing human practices would be a good idea. In tennis, high-speed cameras could
be used to measure human judges‘ propensities to call OUT even when balls moving at
various speeds just touch the line. This information would help to establish an
appropriate rule for Hawk-Eye- like devices. This is how systematic error could be
handled.
In the case of random error the matter is more complicated. In the case where a ball
impacted well away from the in–out edge, decision-making devices could, essentially,
replace human line- callers. They would improve upon human line-callers because they
could obviate cases where the human caller was momentarily unsighted or when a bizarre

19
call is made for some reason.
Where the ball was close to the in–out edge something more sophisticated would be
needed even after systematic error had been discounted. Imagine that random
measurement error could be reliably estimated and consider a line call where the
confidence was less than, say, 99 percent. The tennis authorities could adopt a ―benefit of
the doubt rule‖—always in or always out. Or they could have the call decided at
random—as effectively happens now but without acknowledgement or systematic
understanding of the bias in the errors. Or they could ask for the point to be replayed.
(Most neutral viewers of the Federer–Nadal match would probably have been happier to
see that point replayed rather than called IN.) Exactly what the cut-off point should be,
and what the rule should be, or whether there should be a series of rules for different cut-
off points, ball speeds, and surfaces, is not something that can be prop- erly thought
through without knowing the dispersion of errors in the technological assistant. It might
even be that the umpire should retain the final say in these cases, using the reported
confidence associated with each automated call as an aid.
To proceed in this way, at the very least the information indicated by the questions
listed in note 8 would need to be provided or technical explanations given for its
irrelevance. Or the doubts should be resolved by estimating error in some other
demonstrable and accountable way and reporting the levels of error clearly.

20
 CHAPTER-4
APPLICATIONS OF HAWKEYE SYSTEM
HAWKEYE has had far-reaching consequences in many sports. Primarily in cricket,
HAWKEYE is a process that makes the current judgmental call on a LBW decision, very
predictive. While no technology is flawless and HAWKEYE has its own share of these, it is up
to 99.9% accurate. This has made the LBW decision, a predictive one. More importantly, such
technology can be used to evaluate the skills of the umpire as well. The England Cricket Board
(ECB) has already set-up the HAWKEYE system not only at about 10 cricket venues around the
country but also in the training academy to aid umpires, as well.

Gathering statistics:

While the Hawk-Eye has made its mark and derives its appeal from the ability to predict
the flight of the delivery, it is a very useful tool for collecting statistics. The information
associated with each delivery bowled is routinely processed, even when the outcome of the
delivery is not doubted. As a result, the strategy used by a bowler as a function of bowling spells,
delivery no. in the over, batsman facing the delivery and so on can be gauged. Similarly, the
scoring patterns of a batsman around the ground using wagon-wheels are routine in match day
telecasts. These are so cleverly generated that they give a real-life feel to it.

Commentators also are able to move them about to make a finer point, about a batsman.
However appealing and nice that it may seem, a keen cricketing eye will notice that the wagon
wheel is less accurate than the other data. This is because the wagon-wheel is generated from
data collected from outside the pre-determined pitch area. The location, depth, trajectory of the
ball in-flight at an arbitrary point on the ground is more difficult to determine, than when it is on
the pitch. As a result, some errors manifest.

These difficulties aren‘t faced in tennis – where HAWKEYE is used to decide whether
the ball, was within the court limits or not. In the case of Tennis, lines calls made by
HAWKEYE are completely accurate. Tennis has been quick to adapt to this technology and
HAWKEYE arbitrations are legal since the NASDAQ-100 tennis tournament. Players can
challenge line calls, following which HAWKEYE determines whether the ball was pitched in or
out! The recently concluded US Open QF match between Ferrer and Nalbandian had a match-
point being decided after a line-call challenge.

We now briefly look at the various applications of HAWKEYE which the cricket broadcasters
regularly use these days.

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4.1 LBW decisions:

As mentioned previously, the HAWKEYE can accurately capture the trajectory of the ball
and also predict the future direction of the ball using mathematical calculations. This is put to
use in deciding whether a batsman was OUT LBW on a particular ball. Thus, the system
determines the exact point at which the ball struck the batsman. Using the trajectory of the ball
up to that point, the system predicts the path the ball would have taken had the batsman not
been present in the way. Thus one can know the lateral position of the ball with respect to the
stumps as well as the height of the ball at the point when it reaches the line of the stumps. The
figure below gives an example of the trajectory of the ball being predicted. Note that in this
picture, the system has got rid of the batsman from the picture so as to give us a complete view
of the path of the ball since it left the bowler‘s hand. This is exactly what one needs to decide if
the ball would have hit the stumps and if that is the case, the batsman has a chance of being
given OUT LBW.

Figure 4.1: Detected trajectory of ball

22
 The system is well equipped to handle the various complex clauses which the LBW rule
has. For instance, it can check if the ball had pitched outside the leg stump of the batsman. If this
is the case, the batsman is NOT OUT even if the ball is going on to the stumps. Recall that the
front view cameras are used to determine whether a batsman is right or left handed. That
information is useful here. Another clause states that the batsman should not be given OUT if he
is hit outside the line of off-stump and is attempting to play a shot. Now, the part of whether the
batsman is playing a shot has to be decided manually and the system is not capable of doing it.

Figure4.2: However, the point of impact is accurately known and one can see
exactly where the batsman was hit.

The kind of accuracy which HAWKEYE offers is difficult to get for any human umpire.
The system also includes a way to do probabilistic analysis and hence bring in the factor of
―benefit of doubt which goes to batsman currently. The main idea behind this is to have a region
which the human umpire would believe the ball would have been in this region is just taken to be
a circle centered at the accurate position of the ball and radius.

The value of this radius is calculated taking into consideration the distance between the
point of impact of the ball with the batsman and the stumps – that is, the distance which the ball
is yet to cover. This models quite accurately the uncertainty which the umpires feel while
making the decision manually. Thus, if the batsman is playing forward, the radius will have a
higher value, than when the batsman is struck, playing back. To keep the ―benefit of doubt‖ still
with the batsman, the decision goes in favor of the bowler only if a significant portion of the

23
probable region (circle or radius described above) lies in line with the stumps. The system thus
is very robust and seems to be better than human umpires as it stands and it can only improve.
Hence there is heated discussion these days on whether one should completely rely on the
HAWKEYE for LBW decisions.

Cricket is a complicated game. We must explain some of the rules here on the assumption that not
every reader of this journal will know them. We will, however, assume that readers who are not
familiar with cricket will know baseball.

Cricket is like baseball in that it involves the equivalent of a pitcher and a batter, known,
respectively, as the ―bowler‖ and the batsman. The bowler ―bowls‖ the cricket ball to the
batsman and, as in baseball, the batsman tries to hit it. Unlike baseball, there is no limit to the
number of balls the batsman may receive on a good day a batsman may face hundreds of balls
before being out. In international matches, one game may continue for up to five days. As in
baseball, there are a number of ways of being out, such as when one of the fielders catches the
ball before it hits the ground. In cricket the batsman stands in front of a wicket (otherwise
know as ―the stumps‖) that he has to defend with his bat. If the ball hits the wicket, the
batsman is out there is no equivalent in baseball. The wicket is a set of three.

One of the earliest uses of Hawk-Eye was to project the path of the ball after it hit the
batsman‘s pad in an attempt to judge whether it would have gone on to hit the wicket. Figure
4.3 is a two-dimensional schematic version of the situation from side-on. The ball, traveling
from left to right, bounces and then hits the batsman‘s pad-protected leg. The dot- ted portion
of the trajectory is what has to be judged or estimated. Television viewers see a three-
dimensional virtual reality representation of the projected path of the ball against a virtual
cricket field and they can see it either hitting or missing the wicket. For a number of years
after the introduction of Hawk-Eye, cricket commentators would simply remark on what
Hawk-Eye showed on the screen, giving the impression, perhaps inadvertently, that the
virtual reality represented exactly what would actually have happened had the pad not been
struck. This is where our analysis of Hawk-Eye begins.

A cricket ball is not uniformly spherical. Around its ―equator‖ it has a raised seam and
the two ―hemispheres‖ become more asymmetrical as the game goes on. The trajectory of the
ball after it hits the ground can vary enormously. The bounce depends on the speed, the hard-
ness and texture of the ball—which changes during the game, the state of the ground at the
exact point of the bounce, the spin on the ball and the position of the seam. The swing
which is the aerodynamically induced curve in the flight of the ball, which can be in any
plane depends on the ball‘s speed, its spin, its state, its orientation, the orientation of the

24
 seam and the state of the atmosphere. As a result, what happens to the ball after it bounces is
not going to be fully predictable from its pre-bounce trajectory so that, as far as we can see,
Hawk-Eye has to estimate the post-bounce trajectory largely or entirely from the post-bounce
behavior of the ball {caveat 3} for which it can gather data between the bounce and impact
on the pad. This certainly seems to be the implication of the claim made by Paul Hawkins,
the Director of Hawk-Eye Innovations, in response to a criticism of Dennis Lillee, the
Australian fast bowler:

Figure 4.3. A two-dimensional schematic of a potential lbw situation.

Hawk-Eye simply observes and then calculates the actual trajectory of the ball.
Whether the cause of this trajectory was due to atmospheric conditions, the wicket, or the ball
hitting the seam is irrelevant from a Hawk-Eye perspective. Hawk-Eye just tracks what
happened it does not try to predict nor to answer why it happened.
So, if the ball rears up unexpectedly after hitting the seam or a crack on the pitch, Hawk-
Eye will track the trajectory off the pitch to predict the future course of the ball. Similarly, the
tracking system will come into play if the ball shoots along the ground after hitting a dry spot on
the pitch. (Hawkins quoted by S. Rajesh, ―Give Hawk-Eye a Chance, on Cricinfo website, 18
December 2003)
Our concern in analysing what Hawk-Eye can do is to understand more fully what it means to
track and predict the path of the ball. Predictions are extrapolations and the accuracy of
these extrapolations is limited by, among other things, the quality of the data. No measurement is
ever exact. Heisenberg established this as a deep principle of physics with the ―uncertainty
principle, but here we are talking of macroscopic measuring processes such as are discussed by,
say Thomas Kuhn in his 1961 paper on measurement and, of course, by physicists and most
other scientists as a matter of ordinary fact in their day-to-day work. As a result, it is normal in
science to associate a measurement with an estimate of its potential error.

25
4.2 Wagon Wheels:

Figure 4.4: Wagon wheel generated by hawkeye

trajectories which the ball has taken after being hit by the batsman are recorded in the
system. This is used to generate a graphic showing 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, and 6s all in different colors
for a batsman. These details allow the commentators, spectators and players to analyze the
scoring areas of the batsman and also judge if he has played more shots along the turf or in the
air. Such information is vital for a fielding captain, who might alter his field placement in
subsequent matches to adapt to the hitting pattern of a particular batsman.

4.3 Pitch Maps:

Figure 4.5: Pitch maps as shown by hawkeye

26
 As shown above, the Pitch Map graphic uses information about the position where the
ball bounced on the pitch. The image above clearly shows the pitch being divided into various
―zones‖ which the experts consider in their analysis. It can be very easily seen where the bowler
has been pitching the ball primarily. Based on such pitch maps, one can easily see general
characteristics of bowlers – for instance, on a particular day a bowler might be taken for a lot of
runs. HAWKEYE can show the areas in which the bowler landed the balls and he might be able
to find out he was too short on most occasions and hence was being taken for runs. Batsmen also
use such graphics to study the general tendency of the bowler and can plan to play him
accordingly in the subsequent games.

4.4 DeSpin:

The DeSpin graphics help us in understanding how the ball has deviated after pitching.
The graphic produced shows the predicted path of the ball, had it held its line even after pitching.
This is particularly interesting to look at, in the case of spinners, where one can see both the
flight being given by the bowler and the spin that he manages to extract from the pitch. Looking
at the action and the DeSpin graphics for a particular bowler is useful for batsman to notice any
changes in action when the spinner is bowling a ―trick‖ ball – which might be a googly or flipper
in the case of a leg spinner, or a ―doosra‖ in the case of an off spinner.

4.5 RailCam:

The RailCam graphics show a sideways view of the ball as it left the bowler‘s hand. This
is useful to compare the speeds of various deliveries bowled and the bounce the bowler was able
to extract from the pitch. As a simulation against time, the slower balls can clearly be seen to
reach the line of the stumps much later than the faster balls.

27
4.6 Beehives:

Figure 4.6: beehive of a left hander as shown by hawkeye

This graphic shows the position of various balls in the plane of the batsman. So,
irrespective of whether the batsman played a shot or not, the system places a mark on the plane
showing us the point at which the ball passed/would have passed the batsman. At some times,
this might be part of the actual trajectory, while in other cases, it might be an extrapolated path.
To add to the usefulness, the system can also show the balls on which the batsman scored, in one
color and the ones which he defended in another. This helps to get a very good idea of the
strengths and weaknesses of a batsman and his scoring zones. The bowler can easily make out if
he needs to be bowling away from the body or into the body of the batsman, whether he should
be bouncing it hard into the deck or pitching it up and invite the drive etc.

28
4.7 Line calls in Tennis:

Figure 4.7: Trajectory of the tennis ball as shown by the hawkeye

This graphic is basically used in tennis for line calling purposes. If the player feels that
the line call done manually by the line umpire is erroneous, he/she can challenge the call and
then hawk-eye can be used to generate this model of the tennis court and the exact trajectory
of the ball along with the impact. With this impact picture, the referee could know if the ball
was in or out and accordingly stay with the on field call or revert the call.

In some ways, the technical aspect of the tennis case is easier than the lbw case because
Hawk-Eye has more data points to go on: it can follow the ball‘s trajectory right up to the
point of impact and, sometimes, beyond. (Though we do not know if it uses post-bounce data
points in its calculations {caveat 10}.) Given that no combination of cameras provides
infinite frame rate the computers still have to project forward (and back?) to generate the
virtual trajectory. Again, we don‘t know frame rates so we don‘t know how much projection
has to be done. Tennis balls can be served at up to 150 mph (c.220 feet per second) so in this
respect the problem is worse for tennis than for cricket (we don‘t know how fast balls travel
in the course of a rally).
In the case of tennis, there exists no traditional physical method for digitizing line calls
which is intrinsic to the game as with the bails in cricket. Decisions are traditionally made on
the basis of fallible human observation which is to say that the digitization is normally done
by human beings. It seems quite likely that Hawk-Eye could do better than a human umpire
in most circumstances but, once more, this is not the same as saying it is always correct.
Again, an argument from first principles suggests that it is bound to make occasional
mistakes.

29
 Hawk-Eye reports on its own website that the mean error in the position of the tennis ball
as measured by its system is 3.6 mm. Again, what it does not report is the distribution and dis-
persion of errors or the conditions under which errors are greater or smaller. Here, if we take
the 3.6 mm as the ―mean deviation‖ of the errors, we can do some simple ―as if‖ calculations
{see caveats}. These calculations do not necessarily bear on the actual performance of Hawk-
Eye because we have too little information but they indicate the kind of thinking and calcu-
lating that might be done. These calculations assume that the distribution of Hawk-Eye‘s
errors is the normal distribution and that there is no systematic error in Hawk-Eye‘s mea-
surements as systematic error is normally understood (but see Section 8 below).
Dispersions of errors are usefully reported in terms of the ―standard deviation. If the dis-
tribution of the errors was the well-known and frequently encountered ―normal distribution‖
{caveat 5}, then if the mean deviation is 3.6 mm the standard deviation would be about
3.6 mm × 1.25  4.5 mm.28 Because, in a normal distribution, 95 percent of the points lie within
approximately 2 standard deviations of the mean and 99 percent lie within about 2.6 standard
deviations, we can estimate some putative confidence intervals. In this case we could say that
in 5 percent of Hawk-Eye‘s predictions (that is 1 in 20), the error could be greater than about
9 mm and in 1 percent it could be greater than 11.7 mm. The physics of the situation means
that there could be an absolute upper cut-off point for the errors and this could be smaller than
the calculation from an assumed normal distribution would imply, but we have no firm infor-
mation as to whether this is the case. Even if the numbers we have calculated are correct this
would not mean that Hawk-Eye‘s call would be wrong every time it makes a significant mis-
take. This is because rightness and wrongness in terms of the binary decision (IN or OUT)
depends on the direction of the error. Nevertheless, if the figures were correct it would be likely
to be wrong on some of those occasions and the incidents described above could have been
such occasions. According to Hawk-Eye Innovations‘ own website, in the case of the
Federer–Nadal call, Hawk-Eye called the ball IN by only 1 mm: the possibility for mistakes is
clear even if we look no further than the 3.6 mm mean deviation {see caveats}.
But what does the mean error of 3.6 mm in tennis imply? Is this the mean measured
for all shots including, say, lobs and low fast drives or serves {caveat 11}? Just as in the case
of varying kinds of ball in cricket, it seems likely that the error will not be equally dispersed
in tennis for different kinds of shot.
In an initial e-mail exchange with Hawk-Eye Innovations‘ Tennis Operations Manager,
we were referred to the International Tennis Federation if we wished to understand the meth-
ods of testing Hawk-Eye‘s errors. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) provides details
of its testing procedures for automated line-callers on a website. We understand the ITF has
the true position of the ball measured with very high-speed cameras. The crucial passages
read as follows:
A4.5 Accuracy and Reliability
The decision-making success rate (i.e. ―in‖ or ―out‖ decisions) for all balls bouncing
between 100 mm inside the line and 50 mm outside the line should be 100% with a tol-
erance of ± 5 mm.
The average absolute discrepancy for all impacts on a single line on court should be no

30
 more than 5 mm.
The maximum discrepancy between the system‘s measure of the distance from the line
and the true distance should be 10 mm for all impacts
We found these rules difficult to understand. Initially, we could not understand how
IN/OUT decision-making can be 100 percent accurate if there is a tolerance of 5 mm. On the
face of it, these statements seem incompatible a ball could be 5 mm OUT and still be called
IN. We thought that even if we forget about distribution of errors and just accept the 5 mm at
face value, if Hawk-Eye was taking its measure of accuracy from the ITF {caveat 12} the
Federer–Nadal disputed ball might well have been OUT by nearly a quarter of an inch, even
though Hawk-Eye called it IN. If we accept Hawk-Eye Innovations‘ own figure of 3.6 mm
average error and its claim that the ball was 1 mm IN, the possibility for a mistake is still obvi-
ous. The ITF appeared to agree and in response to our inquiries (all of which took place on
26 January 2008), their spokesman said:
in general, if the ball landed sufficiently close to the edge of the line, there is a chance
that Hawk-Eye could make the wrong call.
Hawk-Eye Innovations‘ own website contains a discussion of this specific line call. The intro-
ductory paragraph remarks:
This document provides more information about the line call that Roger Federer ques-
tioned during the Wimbledon Men‘s Singles Final on Sunday 8th July. Whilst it is unable
to prove conclusively that the ball was 1mm IN as shown by Hawk-Eye, it can show that
1mm IN is a likely [sic].
The ITF was also able to clear up at least some of our confusion in a speedy way. Here is the
gist of the initial response from the ITF.
All decisions made by a line-calling system (―in‖ or ―out‖) must be correct, unless the
ball lands within 5 mm of the outside edge of the line, when an incorrect decision is
allowed, providing that the absolute error in the system‘s measured impact location is no
more than 10 mm.

Example 1.
True impact location: 4 mm ―out‖.
System‘s measured impact location: 2 mm ―in‖.
Outcome: Acceptable (wrong decision, but absolute discrepancy < 10 mm).

Example 2.
True impact location: 4 mm ―out‖.
System‘s measured impact location: 8 mm ―in‖.
Outcome: Unacceptable (wrong decision, absolute discrepancy > 10 mm).
In sum, the ITF accepts errors of up to 10 mm for individual impacts, and the system may still

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 pass the accuracy test overall (contingent on meeting the other performance criteria).
Incidentally, we asked the ITF how many impacts were involved in their tests. They
explained:
Over the full evaluation, at least 80, and normally 100–120. Of these, around 10% land
within 5 mm of the line.

4.8 Prediction of Path in Snookers:

Figure 4.8: Path of the cue ball as shown by hawkeye

Hawkeye finds its importance in the game of Snookers or even Billiards in order to track
the cue ball and to predict a path for the cue ball which when followed precisely can yield the
desired result. The advantage is that, it creates a virtual environment in which the cue path is
traced even after the ball is hit. This application of hawk-eye is different from others as it is just a
coaching tool that could help out players but doesn‘t involve in any decision making which could
aid the referee.

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4.9 Computer Games:

Figure 4.9: The trajectory of the ball shown by hawk-eye in Brain Lara Cricket

The use of the Hawk-Eye brand and simulation has been licensed to Codemasters for use in the video
game Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 to make the game appear more like television coverage,
and subsequently in Brian Lara International Cricket 2007, Ashes Cricket 2009 and International
Cricket 2010. A similar version of the system has since been incorporated into the Xbox 360 version
of Smash Court Tennis 3, but it is not present in the PSP version of the game, although it does feature
a normal challenge of the ball which does not use the Hawk- Eye feature.

Hawkeye finds its importance in the game of Snookers or even Billiards in order to track
the cue ball and to predict a path for the cue ball which when followed precisely can yield the
desired result. The advantage is that, it creates a virtual environment in which the cue path is
traced even after the ball is hit. This application of hawkeye is different from others as it is just a
coaching tool that could help out players but doesn‘t involve in any decision making which could
aid the referee.

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 CHAPTER-5
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND VIRTUAL REALITIES

The difference between Hawk-Eye and human judgment can be understood in a more
gen- eralized way that pertains to the entire enterprise known as ―artificial intelligence.This is
the difference between the real world and what has been called a ―micro-world. Hawk- Eye
called the Federer Nadal ball IN by one millimeter. Such a call could be made only in a
―micro-world the world of Hawk-Eye‘s virtual reality. In real life, the edge of a line
painted on grass cannot be defined to an accuracy of one millimeter. First because grass and
paint are not like that, and second, because, even given perfect paint and a perfect surface to
draw on, the apparatus used to paint the line is unlikely to maintain its accuracy to one
millimeter over the width of the court. Furthermore, tennis balls are furry and it is not clear
that their edges can be defined to an accuracy of one millimeter. In short, in the real world of
tennis we do not quite know what ―touching the line‖ means. In the real world of tennis it is
also possible that a ball that touches the perfectly defined virtual line in the supposedly
equivalent micro-world {caveat 15} might not touch the fuzzy edged and not-exactly straight
real line actually painted on the court. In short, at Wimbledon there is no such thing as ―in by
one millimeter.
A frequently encountered mistake in artificial intelligence is to take micro-worlds to
stand for, or even to be superior to, real worlds and to take possibilities that could pertain in a
micro-world (stacking of blocks by an automatic crane, exact measurement, exact machine
translation, exact speech-transcription, and so forth) to pertain in the real world. To some
extent this may be happening here. The micro-world ethos would certainly encourage the
claim that where Hawk-Eye‘s decisions differ systematically from those of humans, it is
Hawk-Eye that should be taken as the authority because it is the ―more accurate. In sum,
uncritical acceptance of the artificial intelligence approach directs the use of sports decision
devices away from the Automated Decision Principle.

5.1 Measurement error

To repeat, as it is currently used we believe that Hawk-Eye could inadvertently mislead
the public about the degree of certainty that can be brought to a scientific measurement. We
are not the first to notice this. For example, contributors to both the Timesonline and Daily
Telegraph websites in July 2007 questioned whether Hawk-Eye can measure the position of a
fast moving tennis ball to the nearest millimeter as is implied by some of its reports. 9 We,
however, suggest that the potential for misunderstanding Hawk-Eye‘s capabilities could be
obviated by incorporating information about measurement error into the presentation and we
develop the concerns of the contributors to the websites in a more systematic way by linking
them to the concept of measurement error.
Thus, humans and machines make errors of two kinds. ―Systematic errors are repeated
errors that have a similar effect each time; the causes of such errors can sometimes be

34
 understoodand their impact can be predicted and compensated for. ―Random errors‖
cannot be predicted except that their typical size, and the shape of the random
distribution, can be estimated. They cannot be compensated for but they can be taken
into account in assigning a degree of confidence to a measurement. Decision aid devices
are often presented as though it must be a good thing if they make decisions that are
more accurate than those of humans but we show that ―more accu- rate‖ can mean
different things. To know what is meant by ―more accurate‖ both random errors and
systematic errors in humans must be taken into account. Such a consideration gives
rise to what we call the ―Automated Decision Principle,‖ which is a proposal for
how sports decision aids should be used and turns on consideration of both kinds of
error.
5.2 HAWK-EYE CULTURE

An important part of our culture is sport, and it is increasingly becoming a point of

attention in political, social and cultural studies. Beck and Bosshart (n.d., p.27) identifies
sport as "the most important non-important issue in contemporary societies" and
highlights the role that television has played in its popularisation. Another reason for the
extensive reach they now have through mass media and mobile devices through which
people can access sports‘ broadcasts. Sports have become a kind of "social
glue"(Biernatzki n.d., ) which allow for people to get together through conversations
based on this common topic with little danger of conflict in most cases, since people
extremely devoted to sports are rare. Nevertheless, the fact that "[s]port does not exist in a
value-free, neutral social, cultural or political context but is influenced by all of these
contexts"(Jarvie 2006,) must be taken into account to understand the place it holds
within society as a producer and keeper of cultural phenomena. In this section, I will
briefly give evidence to support the notion that sports can be thought of as a form of
popular culture that plays an important part in the naturalisation process described by
Fuller (2008, p.4) through which new technologies are often accepted in society and
discuss how these technologies are being used in different areas commercially and
scientifically.
Habitus is a term often used in the analysis of sport which comes from the French
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. His definition is worth quoting at length since it will be
referred to explicitly and implicitly in of much of the analysis that follows.
The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence
produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures
predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and
organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes
without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations
necessary in order to attain them Objectively ‘regulated‘ and ‘regular‘ without being in any
way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being
the product of the organizing action of a conductor. (Bourdieu 1990, p.53; original
emphasis)

35
 If we consider the broad audience of sports, it is not difficult to begin to imagine how
sports can play an important role in shaping the habitus especially taking into account the
fact that they are perceived as having clear rules which are valid regardless of where they
are played or watched (Beck and Bosshart n.d., p.25). If technologies are blindly used in
sports, this could lead to them being also blindly used in different areas even when people
"understand" that they may not be completely accurate, for "habit provides the strongest
proofs and those that are most believed" (Bourdieu 1990, p.48), which represents a grave
danger since this would mean to relinquish decision making and the production of truth
to the machines, provoking with this a shift in power relations probably as profound as
the one described by Foucault (2011, p.124) regarding what happened in the 17th and
18th centuries after the introduction of new technical inventions andprocesses.
Hawk-Eye builds a picture in which sanctions for having an opinion different to that
of the technology are present in the form of ridicule and even suspension. Habitus,
since it shares its characteristic of negatively sanction behaviours that are not in line
with "objective conditions" Bourdieu (1990, p.55-6) presented by the technology,
i.e. the ‘truth‘. The truth I am referring to is not a thing per se, it is "the ensemble of
rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power
attached to the true" (Foucault 2011, ). Historically, the scientific discourse and its
institutions have been in charge of giving truth, of defining the types of discourse that
are accepted as true statements and to which everything must be compared in order to
assign it a value of truth. The fact that truth making is now being transferred to machines
modifies the systems of power which truth induces and which extend it (ibid., p.133).
This is dangerous because the software used in these machines is not, and cannot, be
exempt of spatial, temporal or social consideration. Furthermore, software modifies these
spheres as much as it is influenced by them (Kitchin and Dodge 2011, p.66).
During a match this year between Joao Sousa and Bernard Tomic at the Montreal
Rogers Cup, after a very close call from the Hawk-Eye system challenge, Sousa
approached the chair umpire annoyed about the call, saying that he was certain that the
ball had been out. The umpire mentioned that Sousa could in fact be right. During the
exchange, the umpire said two important things that bring forth the shift in power
relations and accountability in tennis. The first thing he says is "I trust you [referring to
Sousa] but you cannot compete with Hawk-Eye" and then, he continues, "it could be
wrong, but nothing to do"(Nadal Le Roi 2015). This exchange proves two things: first, that
ontological authority in tennis no longer rests in neither the umpires—line or chair—
nor the players but is now contained within the Hawk-Eye technology; second, this
technology is not questionable even when it is understood that it might be mistaken.
From the image of the call (figure 2), given that the sidelines in tennis measure 50
millimetres, it can be determined that the contact point of the ball on the line is less than
the average error margin of 2.2 millimetres, which means that it is possible that the ball
was out. This is not a certain fact, since this visualisations are a visual approximation of
the algorithmic approximation generated by the 3D composition through 2D images,
however since no other information is made available, it should provide enough

36
evidence to at least doubt the decision of the system.

The power that comes from this production of truth through algorithms and machines
is no longer embodied in an individual who exercises it, it becomes an anonymous ma-
chinery impossible to understand and therefore unquestionable (Foucault 2011, p.156). If
the trend continues, computer scientists could now wield the power and responsibility
previously assigned by Foucault (2011, ) to physicists and biologists who could "either
benefit or irrevocably destroy life" with their weapons. This time around, even though
the power does not come through nuclear or biological bombs it is just as mighty.
Computer scientists through black-box algorithms implemented in their programs can de-
cide the fate of even more people than those killed by the atomic bombs. These algorithms
live in computer software with applications on a very wide range of fields some of which
people are usually aware of, such as finance and advertising, but also medicine, where
Big Data algorithms are being used to decide when and which cancer treatment should
be given to a patient (Marr 2015) and in mathematics to generate theorems and proofs to
further the understanding of certain mathematical fields, sometimes without the aid of
human intervention or even supervision (Puzis, Gao and Sutcliffe 2006). Another situation
where algorithms are used to simplify or automate decision making is in financial trad-
ing, which could have catastrophic consequences as we have seen from the 2010 market
crash (MacKenzie 2011), but it is not the only situation in which financial institutions use
automated systems, it is also used in determining whether a credits should be granted to
applicants. In private conversation with Bernardo Mancera, Solvency Capital Assistant
Manager at BBVA Bancomer, Mexico‘s leading financial institution in the provision of
loan facilities, the process was described as consisting of three steps:

1. The algorithm automatically decides whether a credit is approved;

2. this decision is presented to the client, who has the right to challenge the decision
made;
3. only if the decision is challenged does a person go over the file and the algorithm to
give a final outcome.

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 CHAPTER 6
PUBLIC UNDERSTANDING
A device like Hawk-Eye, which is squarely in the public domain, should be
properly under- stood by the public whose lives it affects. Furthermore, devices like
Hawk-Eye could have a valuable role to play in public education the benefits of which
would spread to all technological decision-making in the public domain. It is vital that
people understand uncertainty and come to understand that some decisions that are made
for the best are bound to turn out to be wrong because of the levels of uncertainty that
attend every decision. This paper has set out some of the ways in which this public
understanding could be enhanced—by clearly stating levels of uncertainty with every
measurement made by widely watched sports decision aids. A new role for sports
commentators would be to interpret and explain these levels for the viewer. Sports
commentators could become very useful educators of the public.
One specific change, not mentioned so far, is so urgent and important that it might
even be appropriate to institute it in law. The law would make it compulsory to stamp
every simulation with a ―health warning. Every television picture, even a live one, is
presented to the viewer in a form that can be represented as an array of numbers
representing the color and brightness of each pixel on the screen. We have reached, or
will soon reach, the point where arrays of equal richness can be generated in real time by
simulation programs. At this point, there will be nothing in the quality of the picture that
enables the viewer to tell whether they are watching the real thing or a simulation. The
potential can already be seen in the cinema where the arrays are still larger, though the
cinema has the advantage that it does not have to generate the numbers in real time.

Another useful visual aid would be to represent the number of data points that
contributed to each reconstruction (though, see the final note, we now understand that this
may be difficult). On the other hand, taking ball speed, bounce point, trajectory length,
frame rate, and so forth into account, it might be possible to calculate a probable number
of virtual data points associated with any one reconstruction.

As indicated at the outset, this analysis reports, inter alia, a piece of research on
public access to technological information. In earlier work (Collins and Evans, 2002,
2007) we analysed the difficulties of public interaction with technology into the
―problem of legitimacy and the ―problem of extension. The problem of extension is to
understand the limits of the distribution of expertise among the public. Resolving the
problem of legitimacy must involve setting enough information before the public to
encourage acceptance of new technologies. In so far as we represent the public in this
paper, our research reveals that, if previous experience were to apply to this case, then
with Hawk- Eye as we have encountered it, and where those tennis fans who contribute
to newspaper websites are concerned, there could be a problem of legitimacy. What we
elsewhere call local discrimination tends toward the negative when relevant
information is not provided. The British government has encountered just this effect in

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respect of statements about the safety of the Sellafield nuclear processing plant, the safety of
British beef, and the safety of genetically modified crops. The unfortunate result was a build-up
of distrust in the government with unfortunate consequences when it came to government
reassurances about the safety of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.37 The goal of
any public technology has to be, not only to provide accurate information, but to provide it in a
way that emphasizes its trustworthiness. We believe this can be done most effectively if
information is given freely, openly and accountably.

It is already the case that even the less rich virtual reality graphics used by Hawk-Eye are too
seductive. Even now the viewer needs to be reminded that they are not watching something that
happened but a picture which has been produced by a calculation based on imperfect data. The
graphic, impressive though it looks, is no more accurate than the data on which the calculations that
generate it are based. As suggested above, these graphics should be accompanied by visual error
bars and or numerical statements of confidence as well as the health warning.

6.1 FUTURE SCOPE

Although there isn‘t a great room for future development of Hawkeye technology in the
sports of cricket and tennis, the hawk-eye technology for football is still in its embryonic stages
and in an year or two would definitely be the part of premier league football and the hawk-eye
innovations call it the Goal-Line Technology. Matt Dickinson has proposed this idea through an
article in The Times on 17th August 2007 named hawk-eye set to extend its influence to
contested goals.

The lessons and expertise garnered on the tennis court have laid the foundations for
Hawk-Eye‘s camera-based football development. Progress began in earnest back in November
2006 when the development moved to the home ground of Fulham FC, Craven Cottage.
Experienced members of Hawk-Eye‘s software development team were able to test their
software in a real-time environment as cameras were rigged in the rafters around the goalmouth
at Craven Cottage‘s Putney End.

It's an exciting time to be working at the van guard of technology in sport, enthuses
Hawk-Eye‘s Technical Director, Paul McIlroy. The development team is relishing the
opportunity to build on our experience from tennis and cricket in developing a brand new system
for football."

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 CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
The HAWKEYE is a great innovation, which puts technology to good use in the field of
sports. The technology is used widely these days, in sports such as Tennis and Cricket. The
accuracy which can be achieved with the use of the system is making the authorities think
seriously about reducing the human error component involved in important decisions. As the
system runs in real time, there is no extra time required to see the visualizations and graphics.

The system is also a great tool which can be used by players, statisticians, tacticians, coaches to
analyze previous games and come up with strategies for subsequent ones.

After all the test that have been conducted on this technology, it has always come out
successful and it promises to be a boon for the world of sports and now it is upto the different
councils to decide whether to use this technology or not. This technology has met the high
reality and accuracy features. This is currently developing a system for Football. This
technology helps to have correct decisions in any kind of game

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 REFERENCES
1) Video Processor Systems for Ball Tracking in Ball Games. International Patent,
publishing number WO 01/41884 A1
2) www.hawkeyeinnovations.co.uk
3) www.wikipedia.org
4) www.therulesofcricket.co.uk

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