Tennis Ball Machine Innovated in Control, Economy and Portability

Tennis ball machine has great performance in tennis training and is prevailing among tennis players. However, three major problems of contemporary products-inaccurate control, high cost, and poor portability have hindered the ball machine from realizing its further potential in training. To solve these problems, our team looks into many popular brands and their products, such as Tennistutor, Playmate, Prince and Lobster, EI papers of ball machine design and other similar ball servers, such as the serving robots in Robomaster. We compare different structures and their performances and come to the conclusion that it is the arrangement of guide rail that mainly leads to the control problem. Therefore, we design a delivering mechanism, in where guide rail is arranged in an almost horizontal angle, and to coordinate with it, a turntable mechanism, in which there are specially designed turntable and its outer barrel, a launching mechanism and a control system. And with reducing the space and weight of each mechanism, we can solve the three problems and explore further potential of the ball machine.