The Premier League will trial ‘robot-refs’ in the four Champions League grounds next season in an attempt to improve the accuracy and speed of offside decisions.
A report by Sun Sport says that skeletal technology is used to give “near-instant offside decisions”.
They add the technology was trialled by HawkEye at one Premier League side this season, and produced “extremely promising” results.
The system tracks 29 different parts of the body, and relays information to assistant referees within half a second of the ball being played.
That will come as great news to fans, with the use of VAR ‘offside lines’ meaning games can be delayed by several minutes as the VAR official decides whether a player is offside or not in the build up to the goal.
If the technology is successful, those lines would be no more.
The trials will be completed in a non-live environment, and FIFA reportedly want the technology to be used during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
It is the latest in a number of key technological introductions in recent years to improve the accuracy of the decisions.
Goal-line technology has been used to great success across world football since 2012, whilst VAR was introduced to the Premier League for the 2018/19 season.
Tottenham Hotspur striker Harry Kane, meanwhile, told The Overlap with Gary Neville that he would like to see a change in the VAR system to give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker in close decisions.
Spurs interim manager Ryan Mason believed the decision to rule out Kane’s goal against Leeds in April – where he looked to be in line with the defender – was “wrong“.
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