Floor-Volleyball Motion Feedback System for Visually Impaired Players

Abstract

Floor-volleyball is one of the common sports for visually impaired people, including the blind in Japan. Its history started from the 1960s and most of young students in the special schools for the blind have experience of this sport in a class of physical education or a club activity. However, there is not an appropriate way to recognize motions of players by their own, because of their visual impairments. Therefore, sensing the motion of the Floor-volleyball player and developing a tactile device which shows the motion was carried out in this research. Using a three-dimensional motion capture system, four visually impaired players’ data were collected and analyzed. The results showed that each player has each character of the motion. The significant difference was observed in the back-swing speed. To display the difference to the blind players, a small wireless tactile display device was successfully developed. It equips 384 refreshable tactile pins which are arranged in 36 by 12. These pins are driven by piezo actuators same as the common braille display. The main feature of the device is that the controller equips ESP-WROOM-02 Wi-Fi module and AAA batteries. The device is perfectly wireless and suitable for the physical education field.