Moritz / Haake The Engineering of Sport 6

Volume 3: Developments for Innovation
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-387-45951-6
Verlag: Springer US
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 440 Seiten, eBook

What you are holding in your hands is probably the best overview of activities in sports engineering available at the time of printing; i. e. the state ofthe art in summer 2006. It is the result of so many people's work to whom we are indebted that it is difficult to name them: there are the authors, the scientific advisory board, the scientific committee, the theme patrons, the publisher and printer, the advisors of whatever kind - and, here we have to make an exception, there is Ingo and Amanda. Nobody who has been part of the production of this book could have done without them, at the very least us: they handled issues you wouldn't even believe could tum up with efficiency and charm. Thanks, Ingo Valtingoier; thanks, Amanda Staley. In the accumulation of the contributions and the preparation of the proceedings we encountered one development that we were very happy about: the sports engineering community keeps growing - in the number or researchers and experts involved, but also in the breadth of disciplines and institutions contributing. This should definitely be interpreted as a positive development - even though in the evaluation of contributions this lead to a number of intricate discussions.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Moritz, Eckehard

Haake, Steve

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Innovation and design.- Computer Application in Sports.- Trends.- Culture, Sports, Technology.- Sustainability; Future Developments.- Materials.

Leseproben

"The Application of Inertial Sensors in Elite Sports Monitoring (p. 289-290)

Daniel A. James
Griffith University, Australia, [e-mail]

Abstract. Arguably the performance of elite athletes today has almost as much to do with science, as it does with training. Traditionally the measurement of elite athlete performance is commonly done in a laboratory environment where rigorous testing of biomechanics and physiology can take place. Laboratory testing however places limits on how the athlete performs, as the environment is sufficiently different to the training environment.

In addition, performance characteristics are further augmented during competition when compared to regular training. By better understanding athlete performance during the competition and training environment coaches can more effectively work with athletes to improve their performance. The testing and monitoring of elite athletes in their natural training environment is a relatively new area of development that has been facilitated by advancements in microelectronics and other micro technologies.

Whilst it is a logical progression to take laboratory equipment and miniaturize it for the training and competition environment, it introduces a number of considerations that need to be addressed. In this paper the use and application of inertial devices for elite and sub-elite sporting activities are discussed. The capacity of accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure human motion thousands of times per second in multiple axis and at multiple points on the body is well established.

However interpretation of this data into well-known metrics suitable for use by sport scientists, coaches and athletes is something of a challenge. Traditional brute force techniques such as achieving dead reckoning position and velocity by multiple integration are generally regarded as an almost impossible task. However novel derivative measures of performance such as energy expenditure, pattern recognition of specific activities and characterisation of activities into specific phases of motion have achieved greater success interpreting sensor data.

1 Introduction

Athletic and clinical testing for performance analysis and enhancement has traditionally been performed in the laboratory where the required instrumentation is available and environmental conditions can be easily controlled . In this environment dynamic characteristics of athletes are assessed using treadmills, rowing and cycling machines and even flumes for swimmers . In general these machines allow for the monitoring of athletes using instrumentation that cannot be used in the training environment but instead requires the athlete to remain quasi static thus enabling a constant field of view for optical devices and relatively constant proximity for tethered electronic sensors, breath gas analysis etc.

Today however by taking advantage of the advancements in microelectronics and other micro technologies it is possible to build instrumentation that is small enough to be unobtrusive for a number of sporting and clinical applications (James, Davey and Rice 2004). One such technology that has seen rapid development in recent years is in the area of inertial sensors . These sensors respond to minute changes in inertia in the linear and radial directions.

These are known as accelerometers and rate gyroscopes respectively. This work will focus on the use of accelerometers, though in recent years rate gyroscopes are becoming more popular as they achieve mass-market penetration, thus increasing availability and decreasing cost and device size. Accelerometers have in recent years shrunk dramatically in size as well as in cost (-$US20)."