Temporal Pattern Attention for Multivariate Time Series of Tennis Strokes Classification

Human Action Recognition is a challenging task used in many applications. It interacts with many aspects of Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Image Processing in order to understand human behaviours as well as identify them. It makes a significant contribution to sport analysis, by indicating players’ performance level and training evaluation. The main purpose of this study is to investigate how the content of three-dimensional data influences on classification accuracy of four basic tennis strokes: forehand, backhand, volley forehand, and volley backhand. An entire player’s silhouette and its combination with a tennis racket were taken into consideration as input to the classifier. Three-dimensional data were recorded using the motion capture system (Vicon Oxford, UK). The Plug-in Gait model consisting of 39 retro-reflective markers was used for the player’s body acquisition. A seven-marker model was created for tennis racket capturing. The racket is represented in the form of a rigid body; therefore, all points associated with it changed their coordinates simultaneously. The Attention Temporal Graph Convolutional Network was applied for these sophisticated data. The highest accuracy, up to 93%, was achieved for the data of the whole player’s silhouette together with a tennis racket. The obtained results indicated that for dynamic movements, such as tennis strokes, it is necessary to analyze the position of the whole body of the player as well as the racket position.