Hear the Sweet Spot: Tennis Impact Localization via Single-Channel Audio

Abstract

Identifying the impact location (“sweet spot”) on a tennis racket is crucial for performance evaluation in tennis training. However, existing approaches typically rely on expensive vision-based systems or specialized sensors, limiting their applicability in real-world scenarios. We propose a sound-sensor-based multi-task framework for racket impact localization using acoustic signals, combining radial region classification with continuous position regression. To effectively model complex acoustic patterns, we design a multi-expert convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture with multi-scale feature extraction and task-specific optimization. Each expert branch operates at a different temporal receptive field and is trained with tailored loss functions, enabling complementary learning of global patterns, class imbalance characteristics, and hard samples. The shared backbone jointly supports both classification and regression tasks, allowing the model to learn more informative and structured representations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework consistently outperforms conventional methods in radial region classification while achieving accurate impact position estimation. Furthermore, additive noise augmentation significantly improves robustness, enabling stable performance under noisy and practical sensing conditions.