Diseño de un sistema de detección de botes de pelotas de tenis de bajo costo para las canchas de tenis de la ESPOCH mediante el procesamiento de imágenes.

Abstract

Tennis, like all sports, has been subject to refereeing decisions. Until now, if a referee mistakenly saw the ball, there was no room for rectification. It caused disputes over questionable points in various local tournaments, where a player might feel disadvantaged. Therefore, this project aims to design a low-cost tennis ball bounce detection system for the ESPOCH courts using image processing. This system would allow a player who feels wronged to request a review of the played point from the field judge and immediately resolve their doubts—an experimental design consisting of two strategically placed cameras implemented. The system process was divided into seven parts: system calibration, video capture, and transmission, image binarization, application of the median filter, verification of the ball’s trajectory, graphing of regions of interest, and bounce identification. This methodology achieved a processing time of 2 minutes, along with an error margin of 1-2 cm, which was considered efficient given the economical cameras and free software used. In this context, it was concluded that the speed and accuracy of the obtained results were much better than expected. Since tennis is a fast and precise sport, minimal error can lead to a failed verdict and disadvantage a player.