Accuracy improvement in motion tracking of tennis balls using nano-sensors technology

Tracking the motion of tennis balls is a challenging task in using cameras around the tennis court. The most important instance of the tennis trajectory is the time of impact and touch the court which in some cases could not be detected precisely. In the present study, we aim to present a novel design of tennis balls equipped with nano-sensors to detect the touch of the ball to the court. In the impact instance, tennis ball receives significant acceleration and change in the linear momentum. This large acceleration could deform a small-beam structure with piezoelectric layer to produce voltage. The voltage could further be utilized to produce infrared waves which could be easily detected by infrared detection sensors installed on the same video cameras or separately near the tennis court. Therefore, the exact time of the impact could be achieved with higher accuracy than image analyzing method. A detailed dynamical property of such sensors is discussed using nonlinear beam equations. The results show that within the acceleration range of tennis ball during an impact, the piezoelectric patches of the nano-sensors in the tennis ball could produce enough voltages to propagate infrared waves to be detected by infrared detectors.