Table Tennis Skill Learning in VR with Step by Step Guides using Forehand Drive as a Case Study

Calvin Ku, Jian-Jia Weng, Yu-Hsin Wang, Dong-Xian Wu, Yi-Min Lau, Wan-Lun Tsai, Te-Cheng Wu, Hung-Kuo Chu, Min-Chun Hu

Abstract: Recently sports training in Virtual Reality (VR) like table tennis is getting more popular. In our paper, we want to investigate and develop an intuitive, immersive training environment for table tennis beginners to learn forehand drive at home due to an increase in the popularity of home training systems. Therefore in our paper, we conducted a pilot study and discovered that it is important to have a stable posture, provide immediate feedback for inaccurate posture, visualize the overall posture and feedback on the most incorrect parts to the user and have a clear step-by-step learning guide. Based on the study, we created a website where coaches can create a step-by-step guide for trainees to train in VR with an RGB camera to predict 3D human pose. We use table tennis forehand drive as a case study to demonstrate its effectiveness. Even though the number of successful returns is insignificant, our qualitative results show that users find our system helpful.