Augmented Recreational Volleyball Court: Supporting the Beginners' Landing Position Prediction Skill by Providing Peripheral Visual Feedback

Abstract

Volleyball is widely popular as a way to share a sense of unity and achievement with others. However, errors detract beginners from enjoying the game. To overcome this issue, we developed a system that supports the beginners' skill to predict the ball landing position by indicating the predicted ball landing position on the floor as a visual feedback. In volleyball, it is necessary to pay attention to the ball that has been launched in air, and visual feedback on the floor surface must be perceived through peripheral vision. The effect of such visual feedback in supporting beginners' prediction skill was not clear. Therefore, we evaluated the effectiveness of the proposed system via a simulated serve-reception experiment. As a result, we confirmed that the proposed system improved the prediction skill in terms of the prediction speed and accuracy in the left-right direction, and that beginners felt an improvement in the prediction accuracy and ease of ball manipulation, thereby increasing the enjoyment. These results also indicate that it is possible to utilize peripheral vision supports in other disciplines in which there is a distance between the object of attention and the sports field on which visual feedback can be presented.