Non-volley zone officiating

The kitchen has a referee now.

One job.Done perfectly.~200ms to the call.

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Chapter 01 · The most disputed line in the sport

Nobody agrees about the foot.

Every rec game has the argument. Every tournament pays a human to stare at a 22-foot line for eight hours. The kitchen call is pickleball's most contested moment — a split second, at floor level, behind a moving body. It's the one call humans are worst positioned to make.

7 FT

of court that decides points

1/60s

window of a foot fault

0

replays at your league night

Chapter 02 · Perception + rulebook, not guesswork

We didn't teach an AI to guess. We coded the rule.

KitchenRef splits the problem. Vision answers three facts — where the feet are, where the ball is, whether it bounced. Then the actual USAP rulebook, written as code, makes the call. Every beep comes with a freeze-frame and a reason.

INPUT A

Feet

Pose tracking locks onto every player's ankles at 60 frames per second and maps them onto the court to the inch.

INPUT B

The zone

A 60-second, six-point calibration teaches the camera exactly where the kitchen and its line live. Once. Forever.

INPUT C

The ball

Ball tracking knows the difference between a bounce and a volley — the fact the entire rule turns on.

JUDGE

Rule 9, as code

Volley while touching the zone or its line: fault. Momentum carries you in after a volley: fault. Standing in the kitchen for a dink: perfectly legal — and never flagged.

Chapter 03 · The moment

Foot. Line. BEEP.

The instant a volley meets the zone, KitchenRef sounds the call — light and tone, courtside, in about 200 milliseconds. No pausing the game. No "I saw it, you didn't." The freeze-frame is already waiting with the foot circled.

9.B — volley while touching the NVZ or its line
9.C — momentum carries the player in, even after the ball is dead

FAULT · 9.B · 0:47.36

CAM 01 · SIDE/NETBOUNCE: NONECALL: FAULT

Chapter 04 · Built on real courts, not slideware

Forged at a 16-court club.

KitchenRef is being built and battle-tested live at Calabasas Pickleball Club — a 6.2-acre, 16-court facility with 500+ members. Every league night hardens the system on real footwork, real light, real arguments. The footage we label is a dataset nobody else has.

16

courts in the live lab

1,300+

court-hours of play per week

100%

of calls come with a freeze-frame

Chapter 05 · For tours, clubs & court-tech partners

See it call a match.

We're booking live demos and pilot courts now. If you run a tour, a facility, or a platform that lives on the court — come watch the line get settled, instantly, every time.

Book a live demo