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. 2021 Mar 7;21(5):1858.
doi: 10.3390/s21051858.

Wearable Sensors in Sports for Persons with Disability: A Systematic Review

Lorenzo Rum  1 , Oscar Sten  2 , Eleonora Vendrame  2 , Valeria Belluscio  1 , Valentina Camomilla  1 , Giuseppe Vannozzi  1 , Luigi Truppa  2 , Marco Notarantonio  3 , Tommaso Sciarra  3 , Aldo Lazich  3 , Andrea Mannini  2   4 , Elena Bergamini  1
Affiliations

Wearable Sensors in Sports for Persons with Disability: A Systematic Review

Lorenzo Rum et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

The interest and competitiveness in sports for persons with disabilities has increased significantly in the recent years, creating a demand for technological tools supporting practice. Wearable sensors offer non-invasive, portable and overall convenient ways to monitor sports practice. This systematic review aims at providing current evidence on the application of wearable sensors in sports for persons with disability. A search for articles published in English before May 2020 was performed on Scopus, Web-Of-Science, PubMed and EBSCO databases, searching titles, abstracts and keywords with a search string involving terms regarding wearable sensors, sports and disability. After full paper screening, 39 studies were included. Inertial and EMG sensors were the most commonly adopted wearable technologies, while wheelchair sports were the most investigated. Four main target applications of wearable sensors relevant to sports for people with disability were identified and discussed: athlete classification, injury prevention, performance characterization for training optimization and equipment customization. The collected evidence provides an overview on the application of wearable sensors in sports for persons with disability, providing useful indication for researchers, coaches and trainers. Several gaps in the different target applications are highlighted altogether with recommendation on future directions.

Keywords: athletes; biomechanics; electromyography; inertial sensors; paralympic; sport technology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart of the screening process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of included papers over journals (in %, left panel) and time (year of publication, right panel). Journals from which only one paper was retrieved are displayed in dark and light grey.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Configuration and positioning of inertial sensors on the athlete’s body. Coding for different body positions, sensor type and number of dimensions is displayed in the legend box. WC = Wheelchair curling [48]; WB = Wheelchair basketball [64]; Ru = Running [72]; SS = Sit-skiing [68]; Ro = Rowing [46]; Sw = Swimming [37,38,39].
Figure 4
Figure 4
Configuration and positioning of wearable sensors mounted on sports equipment. WB = Wheelchair basketball [41,42,49,64,73]; WR = Wheelchair rugby [43,44,45,66]; WT = Wheelchair tennis [50,63]; Wrac = Wheelchair racing [40]; SS = Sit-skiing [56,68]; Cy = Cycling [65].
Figure 5
Figure 5
Positioning of EMG sensors with the specific muscle and related sport. Wrac = Wheelchair racing [47,53,54,67]; WR = Wheelchair rugby [51]; WB = Wheelchair basketball [71]; DS = Downhill skiing [74]; Cy = Cycling [52]; B = Boccia [55]; SS = Sit-skiing [56]; W = Paralympic weightlifting [69]; H = Handcycling [57,58,59,70]; R = Running [60,61,62].
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