A wearable device for sport performance analysis and monitoring

In this paper the use of a wearable device is considered in order to evaluate the performance of an athlete during her/his sport activities. The preliminary step consists of recording the motion variables at a sufficiently high sampling rate throughout the experimental campaign. The collected data are then elaborated by a PC-based application to identify the system dynamics and derive some synthetic performance indicators, by taking into account also the experience of the sport professionals. The extraction of the indicators is based on basic signal processing that can be implemented in algorithms run directly on the microcontroller unit (MCU) of the device. The key indicators values can be sent to other electronic devices by using one of the available wireless network connections at a reduced transmission rate. Some experimental data are also reported to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach.