NEW: Fixed Height Experiment for Service

BWF is also planning workshops to train BWF and CC Umpires on the fixed height service and use of the measuring device, to be held at each Continental Team Championships 2018, in week 6 (6-11 February 2018) and week 7 (13-18 February 2018).

PDF : BWF Letter : Fixed Service Height Testing

 

If anyone from the US Badminton federation is reading this: thank you! for publishing these BWF letters, and thanks to @Master for linking to them.

This allows lower-level (and, I speculate, even some international) umpires to understand and discuss upcoming changes, and educate other interested parties such as coaches and players. I have no idea why BWF doesn't publish these documents in the first place, as befitting a non-profit organization working for the public good.

 

Hey, what do all these mean (BWF is the main body, SJs are service judges, that much I figure out). But what price MAs, and TOs?
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If you are unsure about any acronyms here, head over to the BadmintonCentral acronym list!

MA = BWF Member Association (i.e. a national badminton federation)
TOs = Technical Officials: Referees & Umpires (& Line Judges, although those are irrelevant for serve height)

 

Adjustable seats

 

BWF must get orgasms out of these umbigous law description.
This Danish leadership not only legalized the double racquet forward moves for services aka Fischer, but also legalised the unnecesarrily delayed excecution of services aka Peterson. Furthermore now more people started to do the same aka Kim HaNa.
We should get read of this bozos, and nail firm rules done to avoid arguments.
The Shuttle cock feather circumference is about 65mm. So the current change brings down the contact poit ruffly 5-6mmso it would be 108-109cm from the floor. Do we need this approximity? Why not simply state, the racquet and the shuttlecock contact has to be 100cm max or below. This way whether you are standing on your toes, or bending your knees, is irrelevant and this is effected by the players height, and you compelled to point your racquet shaft downward regardless of your height, you must hit the birdie upward, and no chance of cheating driving your service. Also should firmly make a law that the service has to be executed within 4 seconds of readiness both server, and receiver.
For this danish leadership, not only they tinkeling with the idea of 11 point games, but also looks like they may combine the main stream event with the para event. These sickoos have to go!

 

Because the point of contact is much harder to see than the position of the whole shuttle, both for humans and machines. Also, 100cm would be very low, 115cm is much closer to where most people serve right now.

Other than that, BWF is doing exactly what you suggested!?

You asked for "firm rules (...) to avoid arguments". How do you objectively handle readiness? There are a lot of cases where players go in and out of readiness.

For instance, assume the receivers hand goes up for a second. Where they distracted by something in the crowd (e.g. a camera flash) or simply adjusting their readiness position? If server and service judge disagree, you'll get a completely needless fault call.

 

both the president and secretary general are from the same nation. That in itself is unusual for a federation of a Olympic sport.

Anyway, since that president came into office, one particular member association's performance has gone downhill dramatically.

 

Wow I remember in 2012 i posted that the service rule should be change to 1.3m height click the link

http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/index.php?threads/change-the-service-rule.109546/

no one took me seriously 5 year later bwf is going to try it out this ruling should also eliminate the rule that the racket head should be pointing in a downward position which hardly any pro player do anyways , with video technology like instant replay, slow motion, closeups and side view camera angle you can clearly see hardly any pro players has their racket pointing in a downward position. Most of the time pro players before they serve they would set their serve at a legal height have their racket pointing at a downward position, but at the point of contact the shuttle has risen up to chest height and he shaft of the racket is parallel to the floor. It's just more apparent due to video technology

I don't understand how this is a disadvantage to taller players the height of the net is still the same just make sure when you make contact with the shuttle it's at 1.15m which is 13.8 inches below the top of the net and that for all players tall or short

 

thanks.

I predicted not long ago that an android smartphone app will be able to call a service fault. We will see if that will become true soon.

I now hereby also predict that smartphones will replace line judges within 3 years.

 

Any more details on the implementation? I've been contemplating and designing such an app for a year, but the project is still in such early stages that your input can be valued .

 

are you using OpenCV?

https://opencv.org/

btw, this French guy invented a In or Out device for tennis which costs only $200..

http://www.gentil.com

 

I was planning to. Currently, I'm not in the stage where I wrote more than very simple demo programs yet. I'll look into it, as soon as my umpire software is ... ehm ... finished.

 

sorry, did you mean you are contemplating and designing an app for service fault call or for replacing line judges?

 

I note this is any old post, but I can't see how this would work? Surely the laws of perception comes into this?

 

Perception will trick you when it comes to judging how much the shuttle is over or under 1.15m, not whether it's over 1.15m.

Try it yourself: Hold your hand (or a piece of paperboard / a tablet, ...) level in front of your nose. Now, move your head until you see the top and bottom of the hand/paperboard/tablet in equal parts. Now, if you look at an object far away, the perspective will skew the distance between the object and the infinite plane at 1.15m over the ground, but everything above 1.15 will appear over your hand/paper/tablet, everything else below.

 

At the current design, neither, but more the latter . My current vision is to detect when a shuttle falls close to the line, and then stream that video snippet to the umpire upon request. An automatic In/Out decision would be great too, but I see that as a second step.

In the German Bundesliga, matches are usually umpired without line judges or service judges. But from the chair it's really hard to see the opposite line, leading to some egregiously incorrect decisions - some of mine probably included. If I could just plant 1-4 small and cheap boxes per court, it would help immensely. While I haven't run decent experiments yet, my feeling is that for the very precise level of decisions needed to overrule a line judge, you need a good camera at 500fps or more.

 

The problem I have with it is, I cannot see how having lines on a plane of glass in front of you can tell you accurately the height of something that is several metres away. Surveyors have to use a staff and level to work out the elevation of something (above the datum) at a certain distance away from the point it is viewed at. Without something similar, the parralax could be immense, so I can't see it working.

 

@R20190 @phihag @pcll99
We should probably continue the 1.15m serve height in this current thread.

@R20190
As you can see from images posted by others, having 2 lines to line up on separate sheets of glass help to reduce parallax error.