Abstract. The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use ball/strike judgment practice system for inexperienced baseball umpires. The main idea is to provide a practice environment in a Virtual Reality (VR) space. With our system, users observe a pitched ball, perform ball/strike judgment, and review their judgment in a VR space. Since the whole process is completed in VR, users can practice the judgments without preparing a pitcher and catcher. A user investigation in which participants practiced with our system and judged balls thrown by a pitching machine was conducted. The participants responded positively when asked about the usefulness of our system.

概要. 本研究の目的は，球審未経験者のための使いやすい投球判定練習システムの開発である． 主なアイディアは，Virtual Reality（VR）空間での練習環境を提供することである． 本システムでは，ユーザは投球されたボールを観察し，投球判定を行い，その判定をVR空間で確認する． 全ての工程がVR空間で完結するため，ユーザは投手や捕手を用意することなく，判定の練習をすることができる． 本システムを用いた練習と，ピッチングマシンから投げられたボールの判定を行うユーザスタディを行った． その結果，本システムの有用性を問う質問に対して，参加者から肯定的な回答が得られた．

Materials

[preprint] [ ACM DL ] [ GitHub ]

      @inproceedings{10.1145/3489849.3489931,
        author = {Yanase, Kentarou and Muto, Shunji and Masuko, Kyohei and Nagami, Tomoyuki and Ijiri, Takashi},
        title = {A System for Practicing Ball/Strike Judgment in VR Environment},
        year = {2021},
        isbn = {9781450390927},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3489849.3489931},
        doi = {10.1145/3489849.3489931},
        abstract = { The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use ball/strike judgment practice system for inexperienced baseball umpires. The main idea is to provide a practice environment in a Virtual Reality (VR) space. With our system, users observe a pitched ball, perform ball/strike judgment, and review their judgment in a VR space. Since the whole process is completed in VR, users can practice the judgments without preparing a pitcher and catcher. A user investigation in which participants practiced with our system and judged balls thrown by a pitching machine was conducted. The participants responded positively when asked about the usefulness of our system.},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology},
        articleno = {51},
        numpages = {2},
        location = {Osaka, Japan},
        series = {VRST '21}
      }