PingPongPal

From discussions with our sponsor and consulting our in-house ping-pong SME’s we have derived that the current mechanical practicing solutions that are available on the market are either inadequate for more professional players or too expensive for most people to own. Our solution was to increase the capabilities and improve on the shortfalls of current market designs by increasing the motor effective power while balancing the motor operating ranges to allow for the system to operate for extended periods of time without fail or requiring cooldown.

From our prototype, we were able to achieve ball velocities that no other market solution is capable of doing; in our prototype testing, we were able to achieve a velocity of 87km/hr. Being that we were able to achieve that with a prototype where some of the manufacturing procedures were not fully developed, means that our product when ready for distribution will be more than capable of achieving the velocity goal of over 100kph.

Having the design stemming from current market solutions will bring manufacturing costs down which in turn will reduce the retail price; based on the opinions of those we consulted, the AI bio-mechanical solutions are useful concepts to further our scientific development as a species but as a practice tool is too cumbersome and financially overkill.

Furthermore, our design adds an underappreciated aspect to it, which is the implementation of customizable combo settings, allowing full immersion into the training sessions by allowing the player to target specific weak points and to push the player’s dynamic limits.

Finally, our design also adds the ability to connect the feeding mechanism to a ping-pong back netting, allowing nearly infinite recycling of balls, allowing the player/user to practice without having to refill a reservoir for extended periods of time.

Under heavy collaboration with our sponsor Yongjun Duan, former coach of the Canadian national table tennis team, we established user-accepted milestones. These milestones included high-speed shots, targeting, combo sequences, and a high feed rate.

For the high-speed shot, we investigated the fastest shots in the world. The current fastest smash is held at 112km/hr. For the scope of this course, we set a target of 100km/hr with a lower tolerance of 10%, which yields a minimum of 90km/hr. Our fastest shot is estimated to have hit 87km/hr.

For targeting, we sought out to divide the far half of the opposite table into 9 quadrants. We aimed to hit the center of each target section within a circular area of 15cm which is approximately 3 ping pong balls in diameter. In addition to accuracy, consistency is also vital, thus we established a measure of success in which 10 consecutive balls would have to land within the 15cm tolerance at each of the 9 targets. Unfortunately, due to breakage during our initial tests and demo with our sponsor, we were unable to validate this.

For combo sequences, the main goal was to create code that could handle multiple combo inputs. This would allow players to fully customize their sequences to simulate real game scenarios and target transitional weakness. Currently, our code can handle 4 combo sequences with 64 different parameter configurations.

For the feed rate, we investigated that the average time between moves is 1.2 seconds which is equivalent to a shooting rate of 50 balls per minute. Through our four-finned hopper design and a stepper motor, we were able to achieve a feed rate of up to 60 balls per minute. At higher feed rates the motor would begin to jitter and balls would start to get stuck but at 60 balls per minute, the hopper feeds constantly and without major strain.

With our current design, we are able to provide the customization and power of a mid-tier competitor ($1500-$3000) at a cost of an entry-level ping pong ball launcher ($600-$800). The current selling price of our solution is $700. This due to the straightforward design and standard components. This benefits us in the manufacturing price as well. Even utilizing 3D printing our production times could be as low as 10 hours per unit when utilizing multiple printers. Currently, we are looking for options to manufacture in China as a large majority of our target customer base is in China. This would reduce manufacturing and shipping costs, reduce manufacturing time, improve material options and improve product integration/consistency as outsourcing to a proper manufacturing company will give us access to more modern and intricate methods of manufacturing. Outsourcing the production will also provide more freedom to our owners allowing them to focus on expansion into other sports markets such as tennis.

Based on our current financial forecasts, we will be cash flow positive within 2 years after the full production begins and will be a 6-figure company within 4 years even with a raised estimated production cost.