A System for Practicing Ball/Strike Judgment in VR Environment

The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use ball/strike judgment practice system for inexperienced baseball umpires. The main idea is to provide a practice environment in a Virtual Reality (VR) space. With our system, users observe a pitched ball, perform ball/strike judgment, and review their judgment in a VR space. Since the whole process is completed in VR, users can practice the judgments without preparing a pitcher and catcher. A user investigation in which participants practiced with our system and judged balls thrown by a pitching machine was conducted. The participants responded positively when asked about the usefulness of our system.