An Efficient System for Supporting Bat Swing of Beginners in Baseball Using Wearable Sensors

Abstract

Recently a support system that improves sports skills using sensor or video camera data is attracting great attention. Since most of these systems are developed for professional athletes, few are available for beginners. In baseball, since hitting skills are generally acquired based on oral pantomimed by baseball experts, it is difficult for beginners to understand the advice based on the skill level of baseball experts. In this paper, we propose a support system through which beginners improve their hitting skills by analyzing the batting stance of baseball players using such wearable sensors as acceleration and angular velocity sensors. In our proposed system, beginners swing based on wearable sensors that compose a triaxial acceleration sensor and an angular velocity sensor to the bat and the body. Next, experts in baseball can analyze the modification of the batting stance of beginners by measuring the sensor values of the swing. In the evaluation result, our proposed system analyzed the differences of batting stance between experts and beginners in baseball and confirmed that we can effectively support the hitting skill of baseball beginners.