Diagnosis in tennis serving technique

Abstract

Tennis is a sport with a very complex technique. Amateur tennis players have trainers and/or coaches, but are not usually accompanied by them to championships. Curiously, in this sport, the result of many matches can be changed by a small hint like 'hit the ball a little higher when serving'. However, the biomechanical of a tennis stroke is only clear to an expert. We, therefore, developed a prototype of a rule-based expert system (RBES) aimed at an amateur competition player that is not accompanied by his/her coach to a championship and is not serving as usual (the RBES is so far restricted to serving). The player has to answer a set of questions about how he/she is serving that day and his/her usual serving technique and the RBES obtains a diagnosis using logic inference about the possible reasons (according of the logic rules that have been previously given to the RBES). A certain knowledge of the tennis terminology and technique is required from the player, but that is something known at this level. The underlying logic is Boolean and the inference engine is algebraic (it uses Groebner bases).