Abstract
For a robot to hit a flying ping-pong ball which is rotating fast is difficult. A way is to use a ultra-high-speed camera with tens of thousand fps. In this paper, we have derived the equation of motion of a rotating ball considering forces to the ball from the air, and predict the trajectory based on the equation of motion. We have recorded several cases of a flying and rotating ping-pong ball in 500fps and 200fps, tried to predict the trajectory of each case based on the observed rotation speed and flying speed of the ball, and compared the predicted trajectories with actual trajectories to evaluate the presented prediction method. This paper also discusses the possibility of using a normal camera for trajectory prediction, based on the prediction of rotating speed from initial several frames using the equation of motion.
