Intelligent table tennis ball machine

This project develops an affordable table tennis ball launcher with an innovative control system. The table tennis robots present in the market are quite expensive and most of them are wired controller. Consequently, our goal is to tackle these issues by helping the player to control the machine easily while practicing, hence, we named our project “Intelligent table tennis ball machine”. It uses a Raspberry microprocessor, and works in two different modes: either in the “Training Mode” which is composed of 3 different levels and will be based on vision recognition captured by the PiCamera or in the “Voice Recognition Mode” where the machine will operate by following the player instructions that will be detected though a microphone. Some parameters of the robot can be modified or controlled by the use of a website that was created and easily used though any device whether it was Android or IOS. A counter for the remaining balls in the feed will be shown on a 7 segment display placed in front of the machine. The prototype is a 3D printed model that was first created using SolidWorks programs and evaluated for its performance. This robot will be able to launch the ball in different directions with controllable spinning or speed. In that way, the player will be able to practice all types of strokes in this game and improve his/her reaction. Additionally, when compared to other machines on the market, this robot is remarkably inexpensive for its purpose. 

Project Details