[hash872]

>Boxing for example could calculate the amount of kinetic energy brought to the table and how much of it landed or was sidestepped. How much was absorbed? Not easy to do, but also not impossible

It would be pretty difficult to do in a combat sport without sensors. As I understand it fencing has participants' blades wired up for this exact reason. How would you measure how hard a punch landed from a distance? You could put sensors in the gloves, but some of the time the punches bounce off the opponent's forearms, so you could get a false 'powerful' rating from a blocked punch.

Worse, some of the best punches aren't the most powerful in a kinetic sense, but just happen to very accurately land in the right spot on an opponent's chin. Or they're well timed and the opponent doesn't see it coming, so their surprise makes the strike more damaging. Even if you could precisely measure punch impact to the head from a distance, you'd be missing out on some excellent punches that are less powerful but set up by accuracy & timing. So yes it's basically impossible to measure in any way but subjectively

[noodlesUK]

You mentioned fencing: the electronic scoring system in fencing is pretty primitive, and has not at all replaced the need for a referee. It determines whether a hit has landed, and that’s about it. Unfortunately the sport still has a big problem with how subjective the refereeing is (particularly in sabre, which is my weapon), and that’s driving corruption at the highest levels [1].

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/world/europe/fencing-olym...

[harimau777]

Modern fencing is also just about the worst case scenario for a martial art being watered down in the name of sports. At this point it's basically glorified tag.

[Dalewyn]

I strongly prefer watching kendo over fencing because of that; the human element in fencing is essentially a technicality as far as I'm concerned as just a guy watching.

[harimau777]

You might enjoy this video! The actual topic is the history of Aikido, but it shows some neat historical footage of, for lack of a better term, pre-Kendo Kendo. That is to say, Kenjutsu/Iaijutsu schools sparring using Kendo gear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7yyqLyPGDk

[solardev]

What's competitive kendo like?

[jdietrich]

Accurately assessing the quantity and quality of punches landed is entirely tractable. If you can accurately track the movement of each fighter's joints (plausible with camera-based CV, almost trivial with LIDAR) then you're just solving a fairly straightforward dynamics problem. A well-timed hook or uppercut to the chin is more damaging for predictable biomechanical reasons - rotational trauma causes more damage than translational trauma because it results in greater shear forces within the brain, particularly the brain stem. It isn't a massively more difficult problem than the doppler radar systems used to track ball movement in sports like golf and baseball.

I think the harder problem is assessing the subjective factors mentioned by shadowerm, but that's also a hard problem for human judges.

[Retric]

F=MA Several very high speed and high resolution video cameras could collect all this information based on how glove, forearm, head, etc accelerate/rotate in real time.

You don’t need to process it all in real time. A blow by blow after round highlights real based on the most damaging blows could grow the sport by making it more interesting to watch lesser matches.

[teeray]

You could probably do it acoustically to some degree. A punch is going to violently displace some air proportionately to its impact.

Also, It might be undetectably negligible, but it would be an interesting experiment to see if a sufficiently sensitive thermal camera would be able to gather information on how much the air is getting compressed in advance of a punch.

[jfhdnfbrh]

Respectfully, I think the noise of the crowd + the fighters might make that a non starter :(

[Retric]

You bring up a good point, it definitely a difficult environment. However there’s a lot of techniques for isolating sounds in a noisy environment.

Getting clean audio from performers at concerts is only moderately challenging these days, with plenty of great examples to point to. So I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea.

[natmaka]

It's not only about power but about unbalancing the opponent in order to obtain a knock-down. A weak hit making him fall is better than a massive blow (especially on hitting a strong body area).

[hash872]

The discussion was about scoring. In order to score the fight, you do need to process it in somewhat real time. I don't think waiting a few days to find out who won is going to be acceptable to fans

[Retric]

Sure, which is why AI scoring is a more difficult problem than creating an automatic instant replay with approximate forces.

I’m still thinking minutes here which kind of blurs the long with real time scoring.

[harimau777]

There's a lot more to it than just measuring force. For an extreme example, imagine delivering the same punch (force, target, etc.) to Mike Tyson in his prime versus a 90 year old lady.

[Retric]

People who know how to absorbed and redirect a blow minimize how much their brain gets tossed about, but measuring peak acceleration of the skill is going to show how much someone’s brain got rattled. It’s a solid structure and your brain is inside

Also a you don’t see 90 year old grandmother’s in the ring. So it’s true someone with a larger head has an advantage here, but mechanical properties of tissues should be fairly similar between fighters and acceleration accounts for the mass of the head.

[shermantanktop]

Or apparently Tyson in his prime vs Tyson in his late 50s.