Kinematics of Alpine Skiing By Combining body fixed sensors with GPS-Derived Trajectography

VISION

To provide an objective tool for skill and performance evaluation of alpine skiers which can be used in field and during the real path conditions.

SCIENTIFIC TOPICS

Performance evaluation, training and rehabilitation based on this visualisation tool, body segments kinematics and coordination, subject position and velocity as well as video information.

The skier performs downhill-run (a) while carrying the measuring system (b) including GPS and body fixed sensors. Data from sensors and GPS are combined in order to find 3D joint rotations and segment trajectories as well as inter-limbs coordination (c). Synchronized video-film allows for each chosen sequence the motion synthesis and visualizing of the movement and displaying the skill of skier (d).

 "Moving Virtual Camera" for ski monitoring

APPLICATIONS

Alpine skiing, ski jumping, cross-country skiing.

RESULTS

-          Design of the ambulatory system to monitor in field the kinematics of the skier. The system includes up to 6 wireless inertial modules attached on lower limbs, trunk and head and a GPS receiver on head.

-          Kinematics data recording with the new system in real condition during 6 slaloms.

-          Design of a new algorithm to align body sensors referential with fixed GPS referential. The validation has been done in lab by simulating GPS with position capture system.

MAIN PUBLICATIONS

J. Favre J, BM. Jolles, O. Siegrist, K. Aminian, 'Quaternion based fusion of gyroscopes and accelerometers to improve 3D angles measurement', Electronics letters, Electron. Lett. 42, 612, 2006

K. Aminian, Human movement capture and their clinical applications, Invited Chapter in "Computational Intelligence for Movement Sciences: Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines and other Emerging Techniques ", Editors: Begg, RK and Palaniswami, M. Idea Group Inc., USA , Chapter 3, 101-138, 2006