---
tags:
- ml-intern
---
# Golf Ball Tracker for Mobile Phone Camera

A lightweight, real-time golf ball detection and tracking model optimized for mobile deployment.

## Model Overview

- **Architecture**: YOLOv8-nano (3M parameters, 8.1 GFLOPs)
- **Training Data**: 559 real ball images + 500 synthetic golf ball images
- **Test Performance**: mAP50 = 81.2%, mAP50-95 = 58.6%
- **Formats**: PyTorch (.pt), ONNX (.onnx)
- **Input Size**: 640x640
- **Target FPS**: ~30 FPS on modern mobile devices (via ONNX Runtime or TFLite)

## Use Cases

- **Golf shot analysis**: Track ball flight from tee to landing
- **Swing coaching**: Visual feedback on ball trajectory
- **Mobile golf apps**: Real-time ball tracking using phone camera
- **Driving range**: Automated ball flight recording

## Mobile Deployment

### iOS (CoreML)
```python
from ultralytics import YOLO
model = YOLO("best.pt")
model.export(format="coreml", imgsz=640)
```

### Android (TFLite)
```python
from ultralytics import YOLO
model = YOLO("best.pt")
model.export(format="tflite", imgsz=640, int8=True)
```

### Cross-Platform (ONNX Runtime)
```python
import onnxruntime as ort
session = ort.InferenceSession("best.onnx")
# Use session for inference on any platform
```

## Quick Start

```python
from ultralytics import YOLO

# Load model
model = YOLO("best.pt")

# Detect golf balls in an image
results = model("golf_shot.jpg")
results[0].show()

# Track ball across video frames
for frame in video_stream:
    results = model.track(frame, persist=True)
    # results[0].boxes.xywh provides bounding boxes
```

## Tracking Pipeline

For full trajectory tracking with Kalman filtering and ballistic prediction, see `golf_ball_tracker.py`:

```python
from golf_ball_tracker import GolfBallTracker

tracker = GolfBallTracker("best.onnx")
tracker.track_video("input.mp4", "output_tracked.mp4")
```

The tracker includes:
- **YOLO detection**: Finds golf ball in each frame
- **Kalman filtering**: Smooths trajectory, handles missed detections
- **Ballistic prediction**: Predicts flight path when ball is occluded or too small
- **Trajectory history**: Stores last 100 positions for visualization

## Dataset

The model was trained on:
1. **Zenodo Accurate Balls Detection** dataset (559 images of various sports balls)
2. **500 synthetic golf ball images** with varied:
   - Backgrounds (sky, grass, golf course, indoor, dark)
   - Ball sizes (4-40 pixels radius, simulating distance)
   - Motion blur (0-5 levels, simulating high-speed flight)
   - Brightness variations (0.4-1.7x)
   - Noise and lighting changes

## Training Recipe

```python
from ultralytics import YOLO

model = YOLO("yolov8n.pt")
model.train(
    data="golf_ball.yaml",
    epochs=5,           # Short training (CPU-friendly)
    imgsz=640,
    batch=4,
    device="cpu",
    augment=True,
    mosaic=1.0,
    scale=0.5,          # Critical for small object detection
    hsv_h=0.015,
    hsv_s=0.7,
    hsv_v=0.4,
)
```

**Key insights for golf ball detection**:
- High-resolution features (640x640 input)
- Heavy scale augmentation (balls appear at different distances)
- Motion blur augmentation (golf balls move at 150+ mph)
- Brightness variation (white ball against sky/grass)

## Performance Tips for Mobile

1. **Use 320x320 input** for 4x faster inference (small accuracy trade-off)
2. **Quantize to INT8** for 2-4x speedup on mobile NPUs
3. **Frame skipping**: Run detection every 3rd frame, interpolate between
4. **ROI tracking**: After initial detection, only search nearby region
5. **Hardware acceleration**: Use NNAPI (Android) or CoreML (iOS)

## Limitations

- Model trained on mixed sports ball data (football, etc.) + synthetic golf balls
- Real golf ball flight data would improve performance significantly
- Small balls at extreme distances (>100 yards) may be challenging
- Motion blur at very high speeds may reduce detection rate
- Night/low-light conditions not specifically trained

## Citation

```bibtex
@software{golf_ball_tracker,
  title = {Golf Ball Tracker for Mobile Phone Camera},
  author = {ML Intern},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/notjulietxd/golf-ball-tracker}
}
```

## License

Apache-2.0

<!-- ml-intern-provenance -->
## Generated by ML Intern

This model repository was generated by [ML Intern](https://github.com/huggingface/ml-intern), an agent for machine learning research and development on the Hugging Face Hub.

- Try ML Intern: https://smolagents-ml-intern.hf.space
- Source code: https://github.com/huggingface/ml-intern

## Usage

```python
from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM, AutoTokenizer

model_id = 'notjulietxd/golf-ball-tracker'
tokenizer = AutoTokenizer.from_pretrained(model_id)
model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained(model_id)
```

For non-causal architectures, replace `AutoModelForCausalLM` with the appropriate `AutoModel` class.