Wireless sensor system for real-time performance monitoring in sports

Abstract

In Paralympic sports, investigating seating ergonomics and optimizing for performance is crucial due to individual impairments. Usually, experiments are conducted in laboratory environments and for skiing, usually on a treadmill. In this paper, we are moving experiments out of the laboratory setting to in-slope performance monitoring of kinetics and kinematics. A wireless sensor system is developed and validated in terms of delay. The results show a median delay of 52 ms for the wired main system and 53 ms for the wireless sub-system. The sensor system was implemented on a highly adjustable Paralympic sit-ski, and an experiment was conducted to pinpoint optimal equipment settings for an individual athlete. In addition, the system provided force data from both knees, seat, belt, and both poles. The data collected can also be used to analyze the technique, in addition to assisting in the classification process in the LW10–12 class. The proposed system design also allows for adding a vast amount of different sensor types, and by testing for delay, synchronized with well-known GNSS and IMU sensors already used in many sports to analyze athlete performance.