A New Single Camera-based Ball Motion Analysis System for Virtual Sports

In this paper, a new single camera-based ball motion analysis system is proposed for virtual sports. In the proposed system, a ball motion imaging process using a single camera combined with a multi-exposure trigger is used to capture a ball motion image without high-cost equipment. Then, a 2D ball motion analysis process using pixel labeling and circle fitting algorithms is used to obtain the 2D ball positions and size from that ball motion image. Finally, a new 3D ball motion analysis process is used to simultaneously estimate the 3D ball positions and velocity by solving new ball motion equations based on some 2D-3D perspective constraints on the ball positions and size. The performance of the proposed system was experimentally verified against a multiple camera-based system and a radar-based system within a virtual soccer platform. Experimental results show that the proposed system is highly effective and efficient for virtual sports.