Ball's Motion Estimation Using a Line-Scan Camera

An original method is proposed for estimating the position and velocity of a moving ball using a single line-scan camera. The method consists of two steps: firstly, the ball's initial position and velocity are determined by several key points in the image, and secondly, these parameters are further refined by a model-based optimization algorithm. The algorithm achieves accurate parameter estimation by matching the projection contour of the real ball and that of the same size sphere model. Finally, the relevance and accuracy of the method are experimentally confirmed on synthetic and real images.