Piezoelectric row-column sensing system on table tennis rackets for hit and rotation measurement

by Chao Zhang, Zile Fan, Yafeng Kang

Wearable sensing systems are often constrained by the number of available signal channels: expanding the sensor number typically improves human motion monitoring but drives up hardware complexity. In this paper, a row-column sensing method is proposed to address this limitation in the context of table tennis impact monitoring. The hit sensing position on the racket is decomposed into orthogonal row and column coordinates, with only one single striped piezoelectric PVDF (Polyvinylidene fluoride) flexible sensor placed on each axis. By combining the signals on each row and column, the hitting position is analytically obtained. In a 5 × 5 layout this architecture reduces required signal pathways from 25 to 10 (five rows plus five columns) while delivering same spatial accuracy. Additionally, the denser set of impact locations also enables detection of ball spin. In‑plane and out‑of‑plane rotations produce distinct stress distributions across the racket surface, which the array captures through differential row and column signal patterns. This approach can be extended to other wearable or sports devices that need higher spatial resolution without proportional increases in channel count, and it shows clear potential for advancing table tennis training, officiating, and performance analysis.