Offside Detection System Using an Infrared Camera Tracking System

This paper describes an experimental offside detection system that will be capable of detecting offside passes during a game of soccer. Soccer is the world’s most popular and most televised sport. In recent years, FIFA has implemented goal line technology in order to end controversial goals/missed goals during high profile competitive matches. The most contentious aspect of the sport is the offside rule and its many controversial calls or lack of calls. Sometimes the linesmen cannot see the passage of playing fast enough to make a correct decision. Being similar to goal line technology, people have requested offside technology to help the linesmen and to reduce the number of incorrect offside calls in a game. This paper describes a working offside detection system that can accurately detect offside passes. Positional data was exported from a VICON infrared motion tracking camera system and a MATLAB script was written so that it can analyze the positions of the players and the ball and determine if a pass was offside.