Development and Verification of a Highly Accurate and Precise Passing Machine for American Football

Passing a ball is a central aspect in the game of American Football. However, current passing machines do not fulfill the high quality standards for adequate catch training. The goal was to realize a passing machine that could do precise and accurate passes in a fully automated way in order to creat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bernhard Hollaus, Christian Raschner, Andreas Mehrle
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-06-01
Series:Proceedings
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2504-3900/49/1/94
Description
Summary:Passing a ball is a central aspect in the game of American Football. However, current passing machines do not fulfill the high quality standards for adequate catch training. The goal was to realize a passing machine that could do precise and accurate passes in a fully automated way in order to create high quality automated catch training. Automation was carried out to a degree that the release angle in terms of azimuth and elevation, release velocity and the release spin of the ball could be controlled via a wireless device within a reasonable range. Additionally, a pass prediction model was developed to determine where the pass went to and which height to catch it by least squares fit of 225 sample points with a second order function (R2>0.99). Normalized precision and accuracy of the machine were verified in an experiment with precision being less than 1% and accuracy less than 3% for more than 90% of all relevant passes.
ISSN:2504-3900