Technical Support System for Baseball Beginners by Analyzing Batting Stance with 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, hitting skills are generally acquired based on oral pantomimed by baseball experts who acquired baseball skills at school or club team. In this case, 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 multiple sensors as acceleration and angular velocity sensors. In our proposed system, beginners swing based on attached multiple sensors that compose a triaxial acceleration sensor and an angular velocity sensor to the bat and the body. A baseball coach analyzes the modification of the batting stance of beginners by measuring the sensor values of the swing. In the evaluation result, we analyzed the differences of hitting stance between baseball experts and beginners and confirmed that we can effectively support the hitting skill of baseball beginners.