Abstract
The interest and competitiveness in sports for persons with disabilities has increased significantly in the recent years, creating a demand for technological tools supporting practice. Wearable sensors offer non-invasive, portable and overall convenient ways to monitor sports practice. This systematic review aims at providing current evidence on the application of wearable sensors in sports for persons with disability. A search for articles published in English before May 2020 was performed on Scopus, Web-Of-Science, PubMed and EBSCO databases, searching titles, abstracts and keywords with a search string involving terms regarding wearable sensors, sports and disability. After full paper screening, 39 studies were included. Inertial and EMG sensors were the most commonly adopted wearable technologies, while wheelchair sports were the most investigated. Four main target applications of wearable sensors relevant to sports for people with disability were identified and discussed: athlete classification, injury prevention, performance characterization for training optimization and equipment customization. The collected evidence provides an overview on the application of wearable sensors in sports for persons with disability, providing useful indication for researchers, coaches and trainers. Several gaps in the different target applications are highlighted altogether with recommendation on future directions.
Highlights
The sport category included the taxonomy of sport activities related to the 28 Paralympic sports sanctioned by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC, https://www.paralympic.org/sports) and other forms of sport that can be practiced by people with disability
The available evidence for the application of wearable sensors in sport for athletes with disabilities is mainly focused towards performance assessment in wheelchair sports
Future approaches in dealing with athlete classification and injury prevention should consider the definition of biomechanical and physiological parameters relevant to the athletic performance on a sport-specific basis and investigate their association with the functional limitations related to the type and severity of disability
Summary
Over the last few years, the interest in sports for persons with disability has grown at an impressive rate. The Paralympic winter games of 2018 in PyeongChang hosted 343 thousand spectators, which was twice the attendance at Turin 2006 games, and had a cumulative international TV audience of 2.02 billion views [1]. The participation in sports by a growing number of persons with disabilities has been observed, with evidence showing the positive impact of sport on quality of life, physical health and psycho-social wellbeing in this population [2,3,4]. Given the large variety of disabilities and how they affect and influence the sports practice, advances in research and technology play a key role in providing tools for a safe, inclusive and effective participation in sport.
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