The Application of Inertial Measurement Units and Wearable Sensors to Measure Selected Physiological Indicators in Archery

Abstract

The requirement for objective techniques to observe physical action in its distinctive measurements has prompted the improvement and broad utilisation of motion sensors called Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), which measures bodily movements. However, although these sensors have been utilised to measure postural balance in both clinical and some specific sports, little or no effort have been made to apply these sensors to the measurement of other physiological indicators in the sport of archery. This study aims to ascertain the postural balance, hand movement, muscular activation as well as heart rate of an archer. An archer was instructed to perform two balance standings, two hand movements and his muscular activations of flexor and extensor digitorum, as well as heart rate, were recorded using Shimmer sensors. The mean movement of x and y-axis of the archer was used to correlate with the Pearson correlation for testing the validity of the sensors. Kolmogorov/Smirnov test was utilised to measure the reliability of the sensors over test re-test in two different tests. The coefficient of determination indicates some positive and negative significant relationships between some indicators. The Kolmogorov/Smirnov test re-test reveals a significant difference between all the indicators in both tests A and B, p < 0.001. The archer was able to present two types of postural standings and exhibited two hands movement while holding the bow. However, his heart rate demonstrated some variability during the executions of the movement in both tests. Thus, it could be concluded that the fusion sensors are reliable in measuring the aforementioned physiological indicators.