Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : December 22, 2018 - December 24, 2018
Up to now, it is still difficult to shoot a table tennis ball with high speeds in terms of vertical, horizontal and gyroscopic spins by a commercial table tennis robot (table tennis machine). We have designed and produced a table tennis ball shooting machine, which can shoot the ball with various shot types (loop, smash, drive, knuckle, chiquita, etc.). The produced machine has two launch and two gyro rollers, where the rotation revolutions and directions of the four rollers can be controlled independently. In the present work, we perform shooting tests of this machine to evaluate its performance and to study the ball shooting mechanism. According to the experimental results, this machine has high power to shoot the balls with assorted spin types (top, back, side and gyro spins), the maximum spin rate (over 7,800 rpm), and a wide range of speeds from 2.8 m/s (10 km/h) to 42.3 m/s (152 km/h). Moreover, the direction of the spin axis of the shot ball can be altered freely within 360 degrees by the rotary control of the two gyro rollers.
