Extraction and analysis of 3D kinematic parameters of Table Tennis ball from a single camera

Vision is the first indicator for coaches to assess the quality of a sport gesture. However, gesture analysis using computer vision is often restricted to laboratory experiments, far from the real conditions in which athletes train on a daily basis. In this perspective, we introduce 3D ball trajectories analysis using a single camera with very few acquisition constraints. A key point of the proposal is the estimation of the apparent ball size for obtaining ball to camera distance. For this purpose, a 2D CNN is trained using a generated dataset that enables a reliable ball size extraction, even in case of high motion blur. The final objective is not only to be able to determine ball trajectories, but most importantly to retrieve their relevant physical parameters. Those kinematics parameters could help coaches and players to better analyze strokes with strong rotation effects during training sessions or matches. With a precise estimation of those trajectories, it is indeed possible to extract the ball tangential and rotation speed, related to the so-called Magnus effect. Validation experiments for characterizing table tennis strokes are presented on both a synthetic dataset and on real video sequences.