scholarly journals A Wearable System for the Estimation of Performance-Related Metrics during Running and Jumping Tasks

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 5258
Author(s):  
Salvatore Tedesco ◽  
Davide Alfieri ◽  
Eduardo Perez-Valero ◽  
Dimitrios-Sokratis Komaris ◽  
Luke Jordan ◽  
...  

Athletic performance, technique assessment, and injury prevention are all important aspects in sports for both professional and amateur athletes. Wearable technology is attracting the research community’s interest because of its capability to provide real-time biofeedback to coaches and athletes when on the field and outside of more restrictive laboratory conditions. In this paper, a novel wearable motion sensor-based system has been designed and developed for athletic performance assessment during running and jumping tasks. The system consists of a number of components involving embedded systems (hardware and software), back-end analytics, information and communications technology (ICT) platforms, and a graphical user interface for data visualization by the coach. The system is able to provide automatic activity recognition, estimation of running and jumping metrics, as well as vertical ground reaction force (GRF) predictions, with sufficient accuracy to provide valuable information as regards training outcomes. The developed system is low-power, sufficiently small for real-world scenarios, easy to use, and achieves the specified communication range. The system’s high sampling rate, levels of accuracy and performance enables it as a performance evaluation tool able to support coaches and athletes in their real-world practice.

Author(s):  
Wei-Hsun Tai ◽  
Ray-Hsien Tang ◽  
Chen-Fu Huang ◽  
Shin-Liang Lo ◽  
Yu-Chi Sung ◽  
...  

The study aimed to investigate the acute effects of handheld loading on standing broad jump (SBJ) performance and biomechanics. Fifteen youth male athletes (mean age: 14.7 ± 0.9 years; body mass: 59.3 ± 8.0 kg; height: 1.73 ± 0.07 m) volunteered to participate in the study. Participants were assigned to perform SBJ with and without 4 kg dumbbells in a random order. Kinematic and kinetic data were collected using 10 infrared high-speed motion-capture cameras at a 250 Hz sampling rate and two force platforms at a 1000 Hz sampling rate. A paired t-test was applied to all variables to determine the significance between loading and unloading SBJs. Horizontal distance (p < 0.001), take-off distance (p = 0.001), landing distance (p < 0.001), horizontal velocity of center of mass (CoM; p < 0.001), push time (p < 0.001), vertical impulse (p = 0.003), and peak horizontal and vertical ground reaction force (GRF; p < 0.001, p = 0.017) were significantly greater in loading SBJ than in unloading SBJ. The take-off vertical velocity of CoM (p = 0.001), take-off angle (p < 0.001), peak knee and hip velocity (p < 0.001, p = 0.007), peak ankle and hip moment (p = 0.006, p = 0.011), and peak hip power (p = 0.014) were significantly greater in unloading SBJ than in loading SBJ. Conclusions: Acute enhancement in SBJ performance was observed with handheld loading. The present findings contribute to the understanding of biomechanical differences in SBJ performance with handheld loading and are highly applicable to strength and conditioning training for athletes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morikawa Masanori ◽  
Maeda Noriaki ◽  
Komiya Makoto ◽  
Kobayashi Toshiki ◽  
Urabe Yukio

Abstract Background: Ankle orthotics decreases the maximal vertical jump height. It is essential to maximize jump height and minimize ground contact time during athletic performance. However, the effect of ankle orthotics on athletic performance has not been reported. We aimed to investigate the effect of ankle orthotics on squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), and repetitive rebound jump (RJ) performance and the relationship between jump performance and restriction in sagittal ankle range of motion. Methods: Twenty healthy volunteers performed SJ, CMJ, repetitive RJ under no-orthosis and two orthotic conditions (orthosis 1 and orthosis 2). During SJ and CMJ, we measured the vertical ground reaction force and calculated the following parameters: jump height, peak vertical ground reaction force, rate of force development, net vertical impulse, and peak power. During repetitive RJ, the jump height, contact time, and RJ index were measured. A two-dimensional motion analysis was used to quantify the ankle range of motion in the sagittal plane during SJ, CMJ, and repetitive RJ. Results: Multivariate analysis of variance and the post hoc test showed a significant decrease in the vertical jump height (p = 0.003), peak power (p = 0.007), and maximum plantarflexion and dorsiflexion angles (p <0.001) during SJ using orthosis 2 compared to those using the no-orthosis condition. Additionally, orthosis 2 significantly decreased the jump height at the end of repetitive RJ (p = 0.046), during which a significant negative correlation was found between jump height and maximum dorsiflexion angle (r = 0.485, p = 0.030). Conclusions: An ankle orthosis-induced restriction of dorsiflexion is associated with a reduction in jump height during static jump and repetitive RJ performance.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A Player ◽  
Angeline M Aguinaldo ◽  
Brian B Merritt ◽  
Lisa N Maszkiewicz ◽  
Oluwaferanmi E Adeyemo ◽  
...  

A major challenge in the field of metagenomics is the selection of the correct combination of sequencing platform and downstream metagenomic analysis algorithm, or classifier. Here, we present the Metagenomic Evaluation Tool Analyzer (META), which produces simulated data and facilitates platform and algorithm selection for any given metagenomic use case. META-generated in silico read data are modular, scalable, and reflect user-defined community profiles, while the downstream analysis is done using a variety of metagenomic classifiers. Reported results include information on resource utilization, time-to-answer, and performance. Real-world data can also be analyzed using selected classifiers and results benchmarked against simulations. To test the utility of the META software, simulated data was compared to real-world viral and bacterial metagenomic samples run on four different sequencers and analyzed using 12 metagenomic classifiers. Lastly, we introduce META Score: a unified, quantitative value which rates an analytic classifiers' ability to both identify and count taxa in a representative sample.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 887-894
Author(s):  
Arata Yanagisawa ◽  
◽  
Genya Ishigami

A planar travel distance sensor (two-dimensional sensor) was developed for a mobile robot in sandy terrain. The sensor system uses an optical flow device integrated into a small module with a simple configuration. The system achieves a high sampling rate on the order of milliseconds as well as precise measurement on a sub-millimeter order. Its performance was evaluated experimentally for measurement accuracy and repeatability, velocity response, robustness at varied heights with respect to terrain, and terrain surface characteristics. The experimental results confirm that the two-dimensional sensor system is accurate, having an error of distance traveled of less than a few percent, and that it possesses a wide dynamic range for the robot’s traveling velocity. This paper also discusses the applicability of the two-dimensional sensor for practical scenarios on the basis of the experimental findings.


2019 ◽  
Vol 126 (5) ◽  
pp. 1315-1325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Udofa ◽  
Kenneth P. Clark ◽  
Laurence J. Ryan ◽  
Peter G. Weyand

Although running shoes alter foot-ground reaction forces, particularly during impact, how they do so is incompletely understood. Here, we hypothesized that footwear effects on running ground reaction force-time patterns can be accurately predicted from the motion of two components of the body’s mass (mb): the contacting lower-limb (m1 = 0.08mb) and the remainder (m2 = 0.92mb). Simultaneous motion and vertical ground reaction force-time data were acquired at 1,000 Hz from eight uninstructed subjects running on a force-instrumented treadmill at 4.0 and 7.0 m/s under four footwear conditions: barefoot, minimal sole, thin sole, and thick sole. Vertical ground reaction force-time patterns were generated from the two-mass model using body mass and footfall-specific measures of contact time, aerial time, and lower-limb impact deceleration. Model force-time patterns generated using the empirical inputs acquired for each footfall matched the measured patterns closely across the four footwear conditions at both protocol speeds ( r2 = 0.96 ± 0.004; root mean squared error  = 0.17 ± 0.01 body-weight units; n = 275 total footfalls). Foot landing angles (θF) were inversely related to footwear thickness; more positive or plantar-flexed landing angles coincided with longer-impact durations and force-time patterns lacking distinct rising-edge force peaks. Our results support three conclusions: 1) running ground reaction force-time patterns across footwear conditions can be accurately predicted using our two-mass, two-impulse model, 2) impact forces, regardless of foot strike mechanics, can be accurately quantified from lower-limb motion and a fixed anatomical mass (0.08mb), and 3) runners maintain similar loading rates (ΔFvertical/Δtime) across footwear conditions by altering foot strike angle to regulate the duration of impact. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Here, we validate a two-mass, two-impulse model of running vertical ground reaction forces across four footwear thickness conditions (barefoot, minimal, thin, thick). Our model allows the impact portion of the impulse to be extracted from measured total ground reaction force-time patterns using motion data from the ankle. The gait adjustments observed across footwear conditions revealed that runners maintained similar loading rates across footwear conditions by altering foot strike angles to regulate the duration of impact.


2011 ◽  
Vol 103 ◽  
pp. 583-586
Author(s):  
Feng Ling Li ◽  
Jian Hua Rong ◽  
Yu Ping Zhang

Measuring rock stratum displacement in dam grouting process is very important. A new displacement system is designed, comprising a programmable microcontroller Atmega16, a new grating capacitive displacement sensor(GCDS), DS1302 real time clock chip and announciator etc. The system has high sampling rate of 9600 baud rate and can trap the displacement equal to 0.001 millimeter in one second. Equipped with mechanical conveyance system, the system can be applied to the civil engineer. The experiment results show the instrument can measure accurately the displacement value and alarm geologic disaster in time, which can conduct continuous and accurate monitoring and provide operation decisions for dam engineers.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 957 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anas M. Tahir ◽  
Muhammad E. H. Chowdhury ◽  
Amith Khandakar ◽  
Sara Al-Hamouz ◽  
Merna Abdalla ◽  
...  

Gait analysis is a systematic study of human locomotion, which can be utilized in various applications, such as rehabilitation, clinical diagnostics and sports activities. The various limitations such as cost, non-portability, long setup time, post-processing time etc., of the current gait analysis techniques have made them unfeasible for individual use. This led to an increase in research interest in developing smart insoles where wearable sensors can be employed to detect vertical ground reaction forces (vGRF) and other gait variables. Smart insoles are flexible, portable and comfortable for gait analysis, and can monitor plantar pressure frequently through embedded sensors that convert the applied pressure to an electrical signal that can be displayed and analyzed further. Several research teams are still working to improve the insoles’ features such as size, sensitivity of insoles sensors, durability, and the intelligence of insoles to monitor and control subjects’ gait by detecting various complications providing recommendation to enhance walking performance. Even though systematic sensor calibration approaches have been followed by different teams to calibrate insoles’ sensor, expensive calibration devices were used for calibration such as universal testing machines or infrared motion capture cameras equipped in motion analysis labs. This paper provides a systematic design and characterization procedure for three different pressure sensors: force-sensitive resistors (FSRs), ceramic piezoelectric sensors, and flexible piezoelectric sensors that can be used for detecting vGRF using a smart insole. A simple calibration method based on a load cell is presented as an alternative to the expensive calibration techniques. In addition, to evaluate the performance of the different sensors as a component for the smart insole, the acquired vGRF from different insoles were used to compare them. The results showed that the FSR is the most effective sensor among the three sensors for smart insole applications, whereas the piezoelectric sensors can be utilized in detecting the start and end of the gait cycle. This study will be useful for any research group in replicating the design of a customized smart insole for gait analysis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tang ◽  
Deng ◽  
Huang ◽  
Liu ◽  
Chen

Ubiquitous trajectory data provides new opportunities for production and update of the road network. A number of methods have been proposed for road network construction and update based on trajectory data. However, existing methods were mainly focused on reconstruction of the existing road network, and the update of newly added roads was not given much attention. Besides, most of existing methods were designed for high sampling rate trajectory data, while the commonly available GPS trajectory data are usually low-quality data with noise, low sampling rates, and uneven spatial distributions. In this paper, we present an automatic method for detection and update of newly added roads based on the common low-quality trajectory data. First, additive changes (i.e., newly added roads) are detected using a point-to-segment matching algorithm. Then, the geometric structures of new roads are constructed based on a newly developed decomposition-combination map generation algorithm. Finally, the detected new roads are refined and combined with the original road network. Seven trajectory data were used to test the proposed method. Experiments show that the proposed method can successfully detect the additive changes and generate a road network which updates efficiently.


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