Design and Development of a Badminton Shuttlecock Feeding Machine to Reproduce Actual Badminton Shots

Multi-shuttle training is one of the best ways of training badminton. But it is difficult to practice badminton without the assistance of another skilled player and coaches cannot train large number of players during multi-shuttle training session. To avoid these problems multi-shuttle training machines have been introduced. But these machines are expensive and can be further improved to gain more accuracy and to reduce shuttle damage. This paper describes a badminton shuttlecock feeding machine which was designed and developed in order to reproduce the actual shots. Based on the previous researches shuttlecock trajectory was simulated for four basic badminton shots and obtained the initial ejecting parameters. Then a testing apparatus was developed to test and select suitable ejecting mechanism, to test error and test damage during the ejection. According to the testing results, optimum ejecting mechanism was selected and further the torque calculation was carried out for the dispenser and tilting of roller section. In this paper, a description is given on the prototype designing and development, along with the development of a controlling architecture to control the shot parameters. Finally the fabricated prototype was tested and validated with the use of simulation results and experiments were carried out to find out the degree of damage in the shuttlecocks. In the near future the fabricated machine will be refined with the use of experimental results.