PhD P.M. Morkhat
Institute for Advanced Studies of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSLU), Moscow

Keywords: sports, sport laws, sport legislation, lex sportiva, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence-assisted refereeing service.

Background. Modern artificial intelligence based technologies have been on the rise for the last few years as they are increasingly applied in different ways and versions in many social activity domains including the sport sector. The sport applications of artificial intelligence technologies and systems are most actively implemented and analyzed nowadays by foreign research and expert communities (though still underexplored by the national ones), with a range of associating issues and problems being subject to extensive analyses.

Objective of the study was to analyze prospects, trends and solutions for the artificial intelligence technology application in modern sports.

Study findings and discussion. We used for the study purposes a variety of analytical (including a system analysis), synthesizing, generalizing and inductive methods to collect and summarize the potentially beneficial application fields, models and solutions for the artificial intelligence elements advancing in sports with due regard for the relevant legal issues. Findings and ideas of the study were discussed with many experts in sport law and artificial intelligence technology.

Main application fields for the artificial intelligence technology at this juncture, in our opinion, is the government management of the sports sector [2, pp. 311–313], including the risk assessment and contingency planning components [1]; plus the sport event broadcasting service [6]. It should be mentioned, however, that most underdeveloped at present are the national legal provisions for the artificial intelligence units application in the automatic (robotic) sport refereeing and team/ individual coaching services.

As provided by Ranjit Biswas in his overview of the potential benefits of intellectual (artificial intelligence-driven) robotic spot refereeing service, ‘robotic referee may be interpreted as a physical machine equipped with lasers, high-resolution video-cameras, advanced information and communication technologies and modern artificial intelligence elements with the relevant hardware and software for a high-quality refereeing service in sport events, including football matches. Such a robotic referee will be able to (1) Watch the game from any point of the 360° sphere in horizontal and vertical projections by multiple digital eyes much more accurate and fast than a human eye; (2) Secure an aerial imaging of the game (in addition to the traditional ground images), with the aerial viewpoints moved fast, fixed and/or magnified at any time above the field as required by the game situation; (3) Process incomplete data arrays including any input data and imperfect logical algorithms; (4) Secure high-efficiency data processing by its powerful and fast inbuilt computer system; (5) Move much faster than a human referee to keep close to the ball throughout the game time; (6) Keep beyond a physical contact with the players, ball, gates and game field; and (7) Immediately reach the right viewpoint close to the ball and active player(s) regardless of where they are on the game field and with no risk of physical contact with the players or ball’ [4, p. 58].

Benefits of the above-described artificial intelligence-driven robotic refereeing service are due to its technological potentials and resources (far beyond the human ones) that secure any data arrays being processed in the immediate, fair and unbiased manner (unless the system logics is intentionally distorted by an operator), in a real-time and highly efficient liaison with the data processing office of the relevant sport federation in charge of the event.

Cui J., Liu Z., Xu L. in 2016 offered a robotic refereeing system applicable for the table tennis match refereeing purposes. They supported the need for the system by potential prejudice, fatigue and other natural and unavoidable physical deficiencies/ omissions of human referees. The robotic refereeing system of their design includes efficient hardware and software tools to fix and judge any game situation in strict compliance with the valid rules of the International Table Tennis Federation. The robotic refereeing system piloting experiment proved the system service being highly accurate. The authors believe that the system may at least greatly facilitate a human refereeing service by guaranteeing a high fairness of every decision; and they state that the proved benefits of the system may open up an epoch of the robotic refereeing systems that may be effectively applied in many sport disciplines and events [5].

As rightfully mentioned by Ranjit Biswas, one more great benefit for the artificial intelligence-driven robotic refereeing service in football matches is due to the fact that any damage to the system during the match is never fatal for the event since any element of the system may be replaced in a few minutes with no detriment for the match, and system intelligence, abilities, knowledge and skills are always the same – in contrast to the human referees [4, p. 59].

The modern advancements in the artificial intelligence technologies make it possible to track, record and analyze games with the service quality and precision far beyond the best human service standards. The systems may be equipped with multiple other capacities, including every player tracking and individual game efficiency rating capacities based on a few performance test parameters – e.g. risk to potential gain ratios of every action etc. [10, p.173]. The modern automatic movement tracking systems give a growing range of human movement tracking data and analyses, with the relevant artificial intelligence-driven expert systems being potentially used to identify deficiencies and errors in certain sport-specific motor skills [3].

Lapham A.C. and Bartlett R.M. underline the following benefits of the artificial intelligence-driven sport technique analyzing systems. They (1) provide additional research toolkit for the coaches and sport analysts to advance the elite sport techniques and training systems; (2) help consolidate and synergize the analytical efforts in a wide variety of research fields with concern to the system functionalities and thereby advance the scientific knowledge and database; and 3) help train coaches, experts and athletes in many sport disciplines [8, p.236].

Therefore, an artificial intelligence unit may be applied for the following individual/ team coaching purposes, as provided by the prior studies [7, p.179–180; 9, p.27; 10, p.173]):

– Set long-term objectives for the sport training system;

– Design short- and mid-term training programs, trajectories and priority missions in the sport education and training systems;

– Facilitate logistics for the athletic training systems;

– Rate and control the training process intensity;

– Work out the game combinations, strategies and tactics for every opponent on a real-time basis, with due account of every player’s skills, performance and resource;

– Take selection and recruitment decisions in the team sports; and

– Rate and analyze progress in the training process and collect progress data including the data obtainable with application of training machines.

Conclusion. A large-scale implementation of the modern robotic refereeing (with contribution from the artificial intelligence units) systems to fully replace the traditional sport referees is unlikely possible in the nearest future, albeit some target artificial intelligence applications in the modern sports are still feasible, reasonable and beneficial for a variety of support functions including at least the routine and corruption-exposed ones. We believe that the modern units of artificial intelligence technology may be applied in the national sport sector for the following purposes:

– Provide robotic sport refereeing service in team matches and other sport competitions to step up the fairness and transparency of the service, points scoring, detection of violations etc.

– Improve the government management of the sports sector;

– Offer alternative robotic individual/ team coaching service;

– Provide for and control the sport broadcasting service;

– Forecast results of the sport events;

– Facilitate research in the sport science on the whole and sport biomechanics in particular to help develop and advance new training technologies;

– Facilitate the efforts to develop new sport equipment and appliances, sport garments and footwear;

– Support the anti-doping systems and initiatives; and

– Help produce the sport-related creative and technical texts, including visual, artistic, audio-video and other pieces of art.

References

1. Gibridnaya (yuridicheskaya, organizatsionnaya, informatsionnaya) voyna protiv rossiyskogo sporta. Yuridicheskiy analiz dokumentov VADA i MOK protiv rossiyskogo sporta 2015–2017 gg.: Sb. [Hybrid (legal, organizational, information) war against Russian sport. Legal analysis of WADA and IOC documents against Russian sport 2015-2017: Col.]. Sports. law specialist consortium. Moscow: Buki Vedi publ., 2018, 401 p.
2. Ispolzovanie tekhnologiy iskusstvennogo intellekta v gosudarstvennom upravlenii [Use of artificial intelligence technologies in public administration]. Teoriya publichnogo upravleniya [Theory of public administration]. Textbook. ISSM RANEPA. Moscow: Buki Vedi publ., 2017, pp. 311–313.
3. Bartlett R. Artificial Intelligence in Sports Biomechanics: New Dawn or False Hope?  Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2006, December, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 474–479.
4. Biswas R. Continuous Fuzzy Evaluation Methods: A Novel Tool for the Analysis and Decision Making in Football (or Soccer) Matches: New Innovative Proposal to FIFA & UEFA. Cham (Switzerland): Springer, 2018, xxi; 68 p.
5. Cui J., Liu Z., Xu L. Modelling and simulation for table tennis referee regulation based on finite state machine. Journal of Sports Sciences, 2017, vol. 35, no.19, pp. 1888–1896.
6. De Vleeschouwer C. Autonomous Production of Sport Video Summaries. ERCIM News, 2010, no. 82, pp. 53–54.
7. Fister, Jr. I., Ljubič K., Nagaratnam Suganthan P., Perc M., Fister I. Computational intelligence in sports: Challenges and opportunities within a new research domain. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 2015, vol. 262, pp. 178–186.
8. Lapham A.C., Bartlett R.M. The use of artificial intelligence in the analysis of sports performance: A review of applications in human gait analysis and future directions for sports biomechanics. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1995, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 229–237.
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Corresponding author: constitution88@gmail.com

Abstract

The study analyzes the legal and technical basics, means and potentialities for the modern artificial intelligence technology implementation in sports, including elements of artificial intelligence applicable in the sport refereeing service in competitions to ensure fair and unbiased service; in the points scoring; in detection of violations; in the government management of the sports sector, including the risk assessment and contingency planning components; in the individual/ team coaching service; in the sport event broadcasting service; in the competitive result forecasts; in the sport science on the whole and sport biomechanics in particular; in the new training system design; in the sport equipment and accessories design and production processes; in the sport garments and footwear designs; in the anti-doping service etc. The study analyzes in detail the pros and cons of the initiatives to apply artificial intelligence technologies and units in modern sports. It was found that at this juncture and in the nearest future the existing artificial intelligence technologies will unlikely fully replace the traditional sport referees by some artificial intelligence-technology-based electronic applications. However, artificial intelligence technology applications in sports are quite promising, particularly in logistical, processing and potentially corruptive operations in the sport management system.