NFL swaps first-down chains for Sony’s 8K cameras

Starting with this year’s shot season, the NFL volition usage Sony’s Hawk-Eye cameras to measurement the enactment to gain — a process the concatenation unit has done manually for decades. The 8K cameras volition usage virtual measurement exertion to rapidly and accurately find whether the shot traveled 10 yards for a archetypal down.

The Hawk-Eye strategy is made up of six 8K cameras that usage optical tracking to find the ball’s position. When officials person a measurement, the strategy volition make a integer recreation of the measurement that the NFL volition amusement wrong the stadium and connected TV.

The NFL says Sony’s exertion volition connection a much “efficient” alternate to utilizing sticks and a 10-yard concatenation to way the ball’s position. Measuring the shot with Sony’s Hawk-Eye strategy takes astir 30 seconds, which the NFL says is 40 seconds little than the concatenation unit takes. But this doesn’t spell the extremity of the concatenation crew, arsenic the NFL says they’ll inactive “remain connected the tract successful a secondary capacity.”

The NFL began testing Sony’s Hawk-Eye past year. It volition beryllium deployed successful each 30 US NFL stadiums and planetary venues. Aside from football, Hawk-Eye exertion has go an integral portion of different sports, similar soccer, cricket, rugby, and adjacent tennis, which my colleague Kevin Nguyen wrote astir past year.

Sony already works with the NFL to powerfulness Synchronized Multi-Angle Replay Technology (SMART), a strategy that combines up to 4 unrecorded video feeds astatine erstwhile to assistance officials find the result of a play.