title: A wearable biofeedback control system based body area network for freestyle swimming.
abstract: Wearable posture measurement units are capable of enabling real-time performance evaluation and providing feedback to end users. This paper presents a wearable feedback prototype designed for freestyle swimming with focus on trunk rotation measurement. The system consists of a nine-degree-of-freedom inertial sensor, which is built in a central data collection and processing unit, and two vibration motors for delivering real-time feedback. Theses devices form a fundamental body area network (BAN). In the experiment setup, four recreational swimmers were asked to do two sets of 4 x 25m freestyle swimming without and with feedback provided respectively. Results showed that real-time biofeedback mechanism improves swimmers kinematic performance by an average of 4.5% reduction in session time. Swimmers can gradually adapt to feedback signals, and the biofeedback control system can be employed in swimmers daily training for fitness maintenance.
authors.lastname: Rui Li
authors.lastname: Zibo Cai
authors.lastname: WeeSit Lee
authors.forename: Daniel T H
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Lai
mesh_terms: D001676:Biofeedback, Psychology / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software; D013550:Swimming / Q000502:physiology*; D014584:User-Computer Interface