SENTRY - A novel imu-based system for movement reconstruction

The main goal of this industrial PhD project is the development of a user-centered system that aims to provide useful information on body movements and posture during nowadays activities, including work, sports and home-based rehabilitation. Together with the company (Swhard s.r.l.), we designed the system with a special focus on the skiing context to provide athletes and coaches useful information on athletic performance and injury prevention. We identified three objectives which represent the steps for the realization of this system.

1. Development of a sensorized suit to record skier athletic gestures. The hardware components of the system must be properly designed to be used outdoors on the snow to monitor skiers' movements. It should be a modular system focused on the trunk, but also expandable to include other body districts, such as upper and/or lower limbs. It must be developed as an inertial sensor-based motion suit avoiding non-portable components for at he required in-field usage. The number and position of wearable sensors – inertial measurement units (IMUs) - must be properly investigated according to a user-centered approach. The system’s usability depends on these features.
2.  Development of a mobile application connected to the sensorized suit. A mobile application should be developed to manage sensors’ data transmission to and from the wearable device and to perform data analysis and storage. The app frontend should be an easy-to-use user interface which presents skiers and coaches the data on performance and injury prevention in a comprehensive and significative manner. The results can be summarized in graphs, tracks, images, or just numbers, depending on the user needs and on the message to be conveyed. The choice of the presentation of the results is crucial for maximizing the system’s usefulness.
3.  Identify and test a set of indicators for performance analysis and injury prevention. The hypothesis is that the proposed user-centered system is capable of being a supportive tool for skier performance evaluation and injury prevention. The system should provide a full-body characterization of the skier kinematics by monitoring body segments position and orientation, as well as accelerations and velocities. One or more sets of indicators, related to correct postures and movements, will be identified and sensor data should be analyzed and compared to the defined indicators. The comparison between the set of indicators and collected data must provide insights into the quality of gesture performance and hints for injury prevention. The set of indicators depends on the context and is defined according to coaches and athletes experiences. The level of detail of such feedback will depend on the specific goal of each user and it will encourage the athlete toward correct posture and movement patterns.