RNN-Based Quadratic Programming Scheme for Tennis-Training Robots With Flexible Capabilities

Sports intelligence receives constant attention, especially with the development of information technology. Existing tennis-launching machines, a kind of device launching tennis balls from a fixed point, have shortcomings such as limited launching height and low control accuracy, which are lack of considerable flexibility when applied in a practical situation. In this article, a tennis-training robot based on a redundant manipulator cooperated with a tennis-launching structure is presented to realize a high-precision and flexible ball-launching task. In order to construct a control scheme of the robotic system, the physical situation of tennis launching is modeled, and further transformed into a quadratic programming problem. Then, a recurrent neural network (RNN) is built to obtain the optimal solution. Furthermore, simulative experiments based on the CoppeliaSim platform using a FRANKA EMIKA manipulator are carried out to demonstrate the realizability of the designed application scenarios.