四ローラ式ピッチングマシンの投球性能の向上

抄録

The ball pitching machine (shooting machine) is used for practice of the ball game sports. However, there are few pitching machines that can throw a ball with a gyro spin, such as a football or rifle bullet, in which the axis of the ball spins in the same direction as the ball travels. In this study, we have developed a new baseball pitching machine with a launch mechanism that uses four rollers (two launch and two gyro rollers). From the results of the throwing tests, the pitching machine can throw the balls with a wide range of speeds from 22.2 m/s (80 km/h) up to 44.4 m/s (160 km/h) and all pitch types (no-spin, fastball, curveball, slider and gyroball) at any directions. The throwing accuracy of the pitching machine was higher than other current machines. By the throwing simulations, it was found that the spin performance of the developed pitching machine is further improved.