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Review
. 2018 Mar 15;18(3):873.
doi: 10.3390/s18030873.

Trends Supporting the In-Field Use of Wearable Inertial Sensors for Sport Performance Evaluation: A Systematic Review

Valentina Camomilla  1   2 , Elena Bergamini  3   4 , Silvia Fantozzi  5   6 , Giuseppe Vannozzi  7   8
Affiliations
Review

Trends Supporting the In-Field Use of Wearable Inertial Sensors for Sport Performance Evaluation: A Systematic Review

Valentina Camomilla et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Recent technological developments have led to the production of inexpensive, non-invasive, miniature magneto-inertial sensors, ideal for obtaining sport performance measures during training or competition. This systematic review evaluates current evidence and the future potential of their use in sport performance evaluation. Articles published in English (April 2017) were searched in Web-of-Science, Scopus, Pubmed, and Sport-Discus databases. A keyword search of titles, abstracts and keywords which included studies using accelerometers, gyroscopes and/or magnetometers to analyse sport motor-tasks performed by athletes (excluding risk of injury, physical activity, and energy expenditure) resulted in 2040 papers. Papers and reference list screening led to the selection of 286 studies and 23 reviews. Information on sport, motor-tasks, participants, device characteristics, sensor position and fixing, experimental setting and performance indicators was extracted. The selected papers dealt with motor capacity assessment (51 papers), technique analysis (163), activity classification (19), and physical demands assessment (61). Focus was placed mainly on elite and sub-elite athletes (59%) performing their sport in-field during training (62%) and competition (7%). Measuring movement outdoors created opportunities in winter sports (8%), water sports (16%), team sports (25%), and other outdoor activities (27%). Indications on the reliability of sensor-based performance indicators are provided, together with critical considerations and future trends.

Keywords: MEMS; accelerometer; athlete; biomechanics; gyroscope; magneto-inertial sensors; motion analysis; performance assessment; sports.

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Conflict of interest statement

Valentina Camomilla, Elena Bergamini, Silvia Fantozzi, and Giuseppe Vannozzi declare that they have no conflict of interest. The authors do not have any financial or personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence the manuscript. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Search strategy flow chart. After the removal of duplicates, 2040 papers were screened for inclusion: 183 were selected based on title and abstract, 119 full texts were further analysed. Three were included directly and 23 out of 95 were included after a consensus meeting. The references of the 209 papers obtained from the database search and those cited in the 23 reviews included in this paper were screened leading to the inclusion of further 77 papers for an overall total of 286 papers.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of the reviews and papers in the systematic review over journals (in %) and time (in absolute values).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Device fixing mean in percentage (%) of the total papers, excluded those not specifying the fixing modality.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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