Robotic Tennis Ball Collector Tennibot Hunts Down Balls With Cameras, Sensors, Algorithms
The Tennis Industry Associationstaged a Tennis Innovation Challenge last month. The competition was meant to identify an innovative product or service within the tennis industry. Judges ended up choosing Tennibot as the winner. Tennibot is just as it sounds — a robotic tennis ball collector that uses multiple sensors and a camera to detects balls.
Ten years ago, Tennibot Founder Haitham Eletrabi fell in love with the sport of tennis. What he didn’t fall in love with was picking up balls after a round practice on the court.
“I think one day I was hitting with a tennis ball machine and after hitting for an hour and a half I was sick of picking up balls,” Eletrabi said. “I said, ‘I’m not going to waste anymore time (picking up balls).’”
From here, Eletrabi started doing research into the possibility of creating a product that could streamline the pickup of tennis balls. With his Ph.D. in civil engineering from Auburn University, Eletrabi knew he could come up with something better than the manual ball pickup options currently on the market.
Eventually he came up with Tennibot. “The idea is that you have multiple sensors, a camera and secondary sensors that see the ball, and once it detects the ball, it moves towards it, picks it up and it jumps in the bucket,” Eletrabi said. “Then it moves on to the next ball until it’s full.”
The machine can be controlled like an RC car through an app. The app lets you do many things like choose where you want the balls to be picked up and where you want them to be dropped off. It will also keep track of how many balls have been picked up. This number usually equates to how many balls you hit during a training session.
As for how long the Tennibot takes to pick up your balls, Eletrabi says that it usually only takes a few minutes. “Eighty to 90 percent of balls are usually at the fence, so it’s based on where your balls are at.”
The quick pickup time makes it easier for the tennis player to refine parts of their game. “Lots of people would love to work on their serves, for example, which is the weakest point in a lot of people’s games.” Eletrabi said. “But practicing serves is one of the most boring parts of playing tennis. You’re just hitting serves, then you pick (the balls) up on the other side and do it again.”
Instead of hustling to pick up balls every five minutes, the Tennibot can do it for you while you take a break.
Currently in pre-production, the Tennibot is priced at $900. The question has been raised before: why pay $900 for a product when there are cheaper, manual options on the market?
“When it comes to technology, when you think about the size of the product, a tennis ball machine will cost $1,000 to $6,000 or $7,000,” Eletrabi said. “You have lots of requirements regarding the batteries, motors, durability, the plastics and the frame and the fact that you need to make sure that it’s solid enough that it can maintain.”
Eletrabi says that the price point is flexible and those who sign up first on the website with their name and email will get the best price. They are hoping to start shipping the product by early 2018.
