Visualization of Muscle Activity During Squat Motion for Skill Education

Abstract

Physical skills are important for various service fields, such as sports, nursing, and manufacturing. Experts show high performance by using specific muscular movements which non-experts are unable to use. It is important to understand expert’s characteristic of muscle activity in specific motion and difference between experts and non-experts for skill education. However, people cannot just observe the difference between expert’s and non-expert’s muscle activity and imitate expert’s muscle activity because muscle activities are invisible. In this study, a novel skill education system was developed for non-experts by measuring movement, analysing and visualizing characteristic of the movement in order to improve skill education effect and efficiency. This study focused on squat motion, a kind of strength training. We measured movement of experts with motion capture and surface electromyography, and extract skills for effective and safety training by analysing motion. A method of visualization extracted skills for skill education was proposed. At last, the experiment was carried out in order to verify effectiveness of proposal method for skill education. In the experiment, it was suggested proposal method is effective for physical skill education.