Football Sphericity Measurement Machine

Abstract

This project aims at sphericity testing of footballs of circumference ranging from 68- 70 cm set by the FIFA standards. The CSM (Circumference Sphericity Measurement) machine used for performing sphericity test of FIFA Footballs takes about 9 minutes and 42 seconds to test a single football sample. Using Machine Vision approach to perform the test would reduce the testing time and design expenditure. The implementation of Image Processing techniques such as Hough Transform and Contour Marking methods would be utilized to enable the system to record radius readings for sphericity calculation using high resolution camera instead of traditional sensor being used in CSM Machine. This would result in significance reduction of cost involved in developing the mechanical design and procuring the traditional sensor for replication of already available machine (CSM Machine). The improvement in measurement will be achieved using Artificial Intelligence techniques such as Convolutional Neural Network and Holistically-Nested Edge Detection. The testing time for a single football sample would be reduced to approximately 1 minute. The machine can be controlled with a Windows compatible software providing the graphical analysis of the measurements as well