Analyzing Movements of Tennis Players by Dynamic Image Processing

Abstract

Recently, we can easily obtain a fast computer and a digital video camera as their prices go down. In this paper, we describe a method and a system for analyzing performance of tennis players of a given singles tennis game. We assume that a movie of the game has been shot by a digital video camera which is fixed at a place such that the camera could film whole area of the tennis court and the two players, and that we have the sequence of the images in the computer. Using the positions of the players and the ball detected by techniques of image processing and partially by human assistance, we analyzed the game by defining an evaluation function. We made a prototype of a tennis-player-evaluation system by implementing the method. The system appropriately evaluated performances of players of some sample tennis games, although the evaluation function cannot analyze the player's tactics enough.