Robot Empires. They are finally making their big league debut. Starting next season, MLB players will be able to challenge calls made by home plate umps by using the automated ball strike system.It's also known as ABS. >> The umpires aren't going away. There are still going to be home plate umpires.Effectively what this is is a challenge system, but the way it effectively works is you have these 12 Hawkeye cameras that are situated in your home plate and they take body scans of the players ahead of time goi ...