The Automatic Basketball Rebound System

In the sport of basketball, it is important to practice shooting the ball to develop the skill of making the shot in the basket at a high efficiency. Making shots at a high efficiency allows the player to succeed at a high level in the sport. The main focus of the paper describes the design and development of an automatic basketball rebound (ABR) system. The developed ABR provides a system that will launch the ball back to the player at any position on the court within a 50-foot radius. This is accomplished by a variable spring loaded launching mechanism that will compress a spring, depending on the players location, to generate the appropriate force required to launch the ball back to the player. The novel launching mechanism developed is mounted to a rotary table that ensures the launching mechanism is in the correct orientation with the player once the ball is launched. The player is outfitted with an inertial measurement unit to track their position using a method known as dead reckoning. This information is relayed back to a microcontroller that determines the system response. The ABR system is made from lightweight materials and is compact such that it is easy to move around compared to its predecessors.