Predicting Shot Success for Table Tennis Using Video Analysis and Machine Learning

Abstract

Coaching professional ball players has become more and more difficult and requires among other abilities also good tactical knowledge. This paper describes a program that can assist in tactical coaching for table tennis by extracting and analyzing video data of a table tennis game. The here described application automatically extracts essential information from a table tennis match, such as speed, length, height and others, by analyzing a video of that game. It then uses the well known machine learning library "Weka" to learn about the success of a shot. Generalization is tested by using a training and a test set. The program then is able to predict the outcome of shots with high accuracy. This makes it possible to develop and verify tactical suggestions for players as part of an automatic analyzing and coaching tool, completely independent of human interaction. © Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering 2014.