The problem we are facing is the inconvenience and interruption of the game flow during table tennis training due to having to pick up the hundreds of used balls on the floor. This often leads to players having to reduce their break time during a training session to perform the repetitive and tiring process of fetching all the balls spread across the playing area. A possible solution to this problem could be the use of a robot. This robot could be programmed to autonomously move around the playing area, detect any balls that fall to the floor, and pick them up. This would mean that players can focus fully on the game without having to worry about retrieving balls, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable table tennis experience.
To address this issue, our proposed solution involves the creation of a highly sophisticated robot that is specifically designed with the capacity to recognize table tennis balls. This recognition is achieved by means of an integrated camera and advanced computer vision technology. The primary purpose of this innovative robot is to assist players by retrieving balls that have inadvertently fallen onto the ground during intense gameplay, thereby reducing interruptions and maintaining the flow of the game.
This project consists of two integral components. The first component is the robot itself, which is meticulously constructed and equipped with a Raspberry Pi 5. This mini computer serves as the robot's brain, enabling it to process information, make decisions, and carry out its ball-retrieving function effectively and efficiently.
The second component of this project is a specially designed mobile application. This application serves as a control center for the robot, offering users the ability to control the robot's start time, set timers for specific tasks, and monitor the progression of the ball retrieval process in real time. Through this mobile application, users are provided with a comprehensive overview of the robot's operations, ensuring transparency and control over the process.
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Table tennis training environments usually share many of the characteristics of official competition environments. According to the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Statutes, the play area must always be enclosed by surrounds about 75 cm high, with a dark-colored background that does not have bright light sources. On top of that, the play area’s floor shall not be bright-colored, brightly reflective or slippery, and must be plane and leveled to ensure fair competition for the players. All of these characteristics are exemplified in the figure below.
Source: Taraflex® Table Tennis - Vinyl Flooring solutions - - Gerflor.com. Access in: 27/03/2024.
In regards to the court sizes, training environments usually tend do be much more compact that the official competition requires. A reasonable court size to optimize space usage in training facilities would be a bit more than half of the dimensions of an official court, defined in the ITTF Statutes as 14m long by 7m wide. As can be seen in the image below, an estimated size of 9m long by 4m wide was used to define the expected environment dimensions used in this project.
Source: Authors (2024)
Finally, in regards to the table tennis balls, the ITTF Statutes define that the balls must have a diameter of 40mm, have a white or orange coloring and weight 2.7g. For this project, only white table tennis balls will be used.
Our proposed robot will be meticulously designed and constructed to effectively and efficiently carry out its function of picking up table tennis balls during intervals of gameplay.