The Dance of Baseball: An Exploration of Aesthetics

• Main Author: Young, Veronica Elizabeth
• Other Authors: Latt, Daniel
• Language: en_US
• Published: The University of Arizona. 2015
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/579404

The evaluation of sports performance has historically relied on a coach or instructor. The development of motion capture technology has provided a tool for the objective analysis of movement. Consumer motion capture devices (Wii, fitbit, etc.) have become commonplace, however, they are only used to improve performance in a few sports. One barrier to their widespread use is the lack validated performance measures. The goal of this study is to develop a process for creating and validating motion capture measures that can be used to improve movement performance. A pool of prospective movement parameters was generated from suggestions by expert observers and existing literature. Baseball players and dancers of varying ability performed highly stereotyped movements while being simultaneously evaluated by an expert observer and a motion capture system. The parameters were extracted from the motion capture data and the expert observer scored the parameters on a semi-quantitative scale. We then compared the values obtained from the two methods of evaluation. We expect to find a strong correlation between the scores for some, but not all, evaluated parameters.