Running

Running is one of the most popular sport for the masses. Everybody can run, though not everyone might run properly. Most athletes, especially ambitioned fitness runners, might train on their own and thus rely on self perception. Therefore, a form of reportable measurement may be desirable.
Common wearable devices for running performance assessment are stopwatches, heart rate monitors, and GPS trackers. However, these focus on assessment of the final performance rather than performance determining factors. Especially monitoring of kinematic features such as body segment orientation provides viable information about the athlete’s running technique.

For kinematic analyses we developed ETHOS, a small, lightweight, unobtrusive inertial measurement unit (IMU) that allows for full body motion monitoring.

Differences in kinematics between expert runners and beginners

We equipped 12 runners of different performance levels with each 12 miniature ETHOS units. We found that a minimum set of two acceleration sensors attached to the athlete’s foot and hip is sufficient to derive kinematic features that allow for distinction of experienced and unexperienced runners. Our work constitutes a first step towards personal training assistance providing runners kinematic metrics for performance improvement and injury risk reduction. [Strohrmann et al.; What do sensors know about your running performance?; ISWC 2011]

Automatic skill level, technique, and fatigue assessment

Injuries in running are often provoked by fatigue or improper technique, which are both reflected in the runner’s kinematics.
We present a user study including 21 subjects of different running experience that performed an exhausting run on a conventional outside track wearing ETHOS units.
We present automatic parameter calculation for performance level assessment, training assistance, and fatigue monitoring. A questionnaire revealed that runners perceived the sensors as comfortable to wear and would use them on a regular basis. [Strohrmann et al.; Out of the Lab and Into the Woods: Kinematic Analysis in Running Using Wearable Sensors; Ubicomp 2011]

Publications

2011

• Out of the Lab and Into the Woods: Kinematic Analysis in Running Using Wearable Sensors
  Christina Strohrmann, Holger Harms, Gerhard Tröster, Stefanie Hensler and Roland Müller
  in: Proceedings of the 13th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2011), ACM, 2011
  [ BiBTeX RIS PDF ]
• What do sensors know about your running performance?
  Christina Strohrmann, Holger Harms and Gerhard Tröster
  in: Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC 2011), IEEE Computer Society, 2011
  [ BiBTeX RIS PDF ]