Suitability of strain gage sensors for integration into smart sport equipment : a golf club example

Umek, Anton (author), Zhang, Yuan (author), Tomažič, Sašo (author), Kos, Anton (author)

Wearable devices and smart sport equipment are being increasingly used in amateur and professional sports. Smart sport equipment employs various sensors for detecting its state and actions. The correct choice of the most appropriate sensor(s) is of paramount importance for efficient and successful operation of sport equipment. When integrated into the sport equipment, ideal sensors are unobstructive, and do not change the functionality of the equipment. The article focuses on experiments for identification and selection of sensors that are suitable for the integration into a golf club with the final goal of their use in real time biofeedback applications. We tested two orthogonally affixed strain gage (SG) sensors, a 3-axis accelerometer, and a 3-axis gyroscope. The strain gage sensors are calibrated and validated in the laboratory environment by a highly accurate Qualisys Track Manager (QTM) optical tracking system. Field test results show that different types of golf swing and improper movement in early phases of golf swing can be detected with strain gage sensors attached to the shaft of the golf club. Thus they are suitable for biofeedback applications to help golfers to learn repetitive golf swings. It is suggested that the use of strain gage sensors can improve the golf swing technical error detection accuracy and that strain gage sensors alone are enough for basic golf swing analysis. Our final goal is to be able to acquire and analyze as many parameters of a smart golf club in real time during the entire duration of the swing. This would give us the ability to design mobile and cloud biofeedback applications with terminal or concurrent feedback that will enable us to speed-up motor skill learning in golf.

• Language: English
• Keywords: smart sport equipment, sensor selection, strain gage sensors, gyroscope, accelerometer, golf swing analysis
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FE - Faculty of Electrical Engineering
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2017
• Number of pages: 18 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 17, iss. 4, art. 916
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-131095
• UDC: 621.39
• ISSN on article: 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s17040916
• COBISS.SI-ID: 11726676
• Publication date in RUL: 22.09.2021

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Sensors
• Shortened title: Sensors
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 1424-8220
• COBISS.SI-ID: 10176278

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.
• Licensing start date: 21.04.2017

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: pametna športna oprema, izbira senzorjev, strain gage senzorji, žiroskop, pospeškometer, analiza golfskega zamaha