Simning är en sport där små marginaler har stor inverkan på resultatet. I OS-finalen 2008 vann Michael Phelps över Milorad Čavić med en hundradels sekund. För att få marginalen på sin sida behöver simmaren träna otaliga timmar. I dagsläget har Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan inte en bra prototyp för att testa, utvärdera och mäta en simmares träning. Att kontinuerligt under ett helt träningspass få mätvärden som kan användas för att förbättra simtekniken skulle kunna ge en stor fördel. Målet med det här examensarbetet är att utvärdera möjligheten att utveckla en metod för att mäta dessa värden. Metoden som valdes var att med en IMU och mikrokontroller mäta rörelser. En jämförelseanalys gjordes mellan mikrokontrollers för att ge plattformen bästa utvecklingsmöjligheter. Efter resultatet från jämförelseanalysen införskaffades de två olika mikrokontrollers som hade störst potential och dessa två jämfördes vidare. Därefter utvecklades flera möjliga designer för plattformen med störst potential som kan användas för att kvantifiera simträning. Resultatet blev två funktionella protyper som uppfyllde de krav som ställdes. Framtida utveckling skulle vara att testa och utvärdera plattformarna vidare och hitta andra sporter och användningsområden. / Swimming is a sport where small margins can have a big impact on the result. In the 2008 Olympic finals Michael Phelps won over Milorad Čavić by one hundredth of a second. To get the margin on their side, the swimmers need to practice countless hours. Currently, the Royal Institute of Technology does not have a good prototype for testing, evaluating, and measuring a swimmer's training. Continuously getting measured values during an entire training session that can be used to improve a swimming technique could provide a great advantage. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the possibility of developing a method for measuring these metrics. The method chosen was to measure movements using an IMU and microcontroller. A comparison analysis was made between microcontrollers to provide the platform with the best development opportunities. Following the results of the comparison analysis, two different microcontrollers with the greatest potential were acquired and these two were further compared. Subsequently, several possible designs were developed for the platform with the greatest potential that can be used to quantify swim training. The result was two functional prototypes that met the requirements. Future development would be to test and evaluate the platforms further and find other sports and areas of use.

I ABSTRACT Title: Kinesiological analysis of upper limb punch strike in sports karate. Aim of work: The aim of this thesis to describe and characterize the muscle involement in direct punch strike in karate. Then compared with the exercises, which are characteristic to karate - strikes with resistence and push-up exercise. Methods: Work is processed by a comparative analysis of selected movements based on the determination of muscle activation. The surface electromyography method synchronized with video and accelerometer was used in this work. Results: The result is describtion of selcted movements on the basis of muscle activation and function of selected muscles. The prove that the forearm extensors are activated as the last of the selcted muscles was managed. On the basis of karate technique and anatomy we confirmed important role of forearm extensor by direct punch in karate. The difference between onset time muscle activation by strikes and push up was found. Maximum speed of acral part of the upper limb by direct punch was established. Keywords: Electromyography (EMG), karate, direct punch - gyakucuki, accelrometer

In recent years physical inactivity among students has become a matter of great concern. Nearly 65% of students do not meet the daily recommended level of physical activity, which is 60 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day, with 50% of that time being spent in moderate to vigorous levels of activity (CDC, 2010b). As a result, the 21st century has shown to be a time of many health problems such as, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In fact, nearly one third of all children are considered obese or overweight (Slawta & DeNeui, 2009). Researchers suggest that these health problems are directly related to students' sedentary lifestyles (Pate et al., 2006). Schools play a pivotal role in addressing and increasing physical activity during the school day. The purpose of this research study was to measure levels of physical activity in elementary students during school hours. Specifically, the study sought to discover if there were increased levels of physical activity while students were using a cross-curricular adventure playground, as compared to when they were engaged in free play or physical education class. The study also compared the different measurement types (pedometers, accelerometers, and the observational method) used to assess physical activity, to indicate which measurement types were most feasible in the elementary school setting. Schools are ideal locations for assessing levels of physical activity, as 95% of all children are enrolled in these learning institutions (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2005). The data indicate that physical education provided for the highest levels of moderate to vigorous activity, while both free play and cross-curricular activity still rendered adequate levels of physical activity. After studying the different measurement protocols (pedometers, accelerometers, and the observational method) used in this study, results suggested the pedometer to be the most feasible device to use for measuring children in these types of physical activity settings. One implication for practice was implementing cross-curricular physical activity as a supplement to other physical activities or as an addition to physical education classes in an effort to allow more time for academic instruction while having students engaged in physical activity. Another recommendation for practice was to use pedometers as a cost-effective physical activity measurement device for elementary students.

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo’s PolySat team is designing the Multipurpose Orbital Spring Ejection System (MOSES) in order to record acceleration data during the launch of CubeSats as well as to provide GPS coordinates to locate the position of CubeSats once they are injected into orbit. This work focuses on the design and development of the acceleration data acquisition (DAQ) subsystem of MOSES. This subsystem is designed around the need for a high-speed sampling system of at least 200 kHz across four channels of data, plus low-area limitations in the MOSES form factor which is roughly half the size of a standard CubeSat. To address these specifications, the design explores system implementation around a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA with a built-in analog-to-digital converter and a custom hardware solution.

Fully compliant bistable mechanisms have been proposed to be used as threshold accelerometers. The advantages to using these devices are that they require no external power to operate and maintain their sensing state. Using this characteristic the devices can be integrated with passive radio frequency identification tags (RFID). This allows for the sensing package to lay dormant with no maintenance needed until the sensor is read by the RFID reader. This thesis presents a successfully fabricated and integrated threshold accelerometer with a passive RFID tag. This in turn has been successfully read with an RFID reader and shown to act as a wireless passive sensor indicating whether or not a threshold acceleration has been exceeded. It is shown that in general plastics are not a suitable material to use in threshold accelerometers due to variability in fabrication, temperature and prolonged stresses inducing stress relaxation in the material. Multiple methods for testing the switching forces of these threshold accelerometers are developed and a frequency response for the switching forces of these devices is explored. A straight-leg bistable mechanism design model is introduced and used to design metal bistable devices to reduce the variations seen in the plastic threshold accelerometers. With this metal design a new fabrication process is introduced to attain thin metal compliant flexures with little variation in the thickness of the compliant flexures. This method allows for a more economical method of producing compliant flexures. The metal bistable mechanism designs presented show significant improvement over the plastic bistable designs. These improvements include minimizing the effects of stress relaxation, minimizing variation in switching forces and minimizing variation between fabricated devices. The cost, however, with the metal bistable mechanism design would be more than the plastic bistable mechanism design.

Free surface water entry of various objects has been studied using high-speed images and image processing techniques for decades. This thesis studies the forces, velocities, and trajectories of slender axisymmetric projectiles using an embedded inertial measurement unit (IMU). Three nose shapes (cone, ogive, and flat) were used in the study. Additionally, the projectiles were tested at vertical and oblique impact angles with different surface conditions. One-half of each projectile was coated down the centerline with a hydrophobic spray, creating a half hydrophobic, half hydrophilic case. The trajectory of this half-and-half case impacting vertically was compared to the trajectory of symmetrically coated projectiles impacting the free surface at oblique angles. The oblique impact cases showed significantly more final lateral displacement than the half-and-half case over the same depth. The amount of lateral displacement was also affected by the nose shape, with the cone nose shape achieving the largest lateral displacement for the oblique entry case. Instantaneous lift and drag coefficients were calculated using data from the IMU for the vertical, half-and-half, and oblique entry cases. Impact forces were calculated for each nose shape and the flat nose shape experienced impulsive forces between 25 N and 37 N when impacting vertically. The impact force for the flat nose decreased for the oblique entry case. Acoustic spectrograms showed that the sound produced during the water entry event predominately arises from the pinch-off for the cone and ogive nose shapes, with additional sound production from impact for the flat nose shape.

The following paper describes a fall detection and activity monitoring system with position detection based on Zigbee transceivers.The main objective is to reduce the time taken for emergency personnel to respond to falls among the elderly. Especially when the victim is unconscious or delirious, position tracking reduces location determination time within a busy hospital or nursing home environment and facilitates immediate treatment. Reduced response times correlate to decreased morbidity and mortality rates. Background is provided on the major wireless network advances currently deployed in a healthcare setting for asset and personnel tracking, etiology of falls, and several methods of detecting falls using sensors and image processing techniques. Data analysis proves that a precise coordinate tracking system was infeasible using the XBee RF module (based on the Zigbee protocol) due to environmental noise, a poor antenna construction and lack of precise signal strength measurements. A primitive scheme with lower resolution and higher reliability associating a single location with each Zigbee transceiver was employed. A pedometer function was added to the project to monitor the user’s daily activity and to potentially serve as a predictor of falls through the interpretation of mobility and gait patterns related to step counts.

BACKGROUND: The amount and intensity of people's activities are related to latent chronic diseases and the aging process. Accurate information about people's patterns of activity in their natural environments would go a long way toward understanding the relationship between types/levels of activity and health. Unlike the commercially available activity monitors, an algorithm developed at Boston University utilizes frequency (cycles/second) to identify overground gait and pedaling. These studies evaluate the validity of this system in a real-life environment and then investigate people's locomotive behavior across weekdays of the same week. METHODS: Wearing the monitoring system developed at BU on their right ankles, 16 older adults performed a battery of functional locomotive activities continuously in a residential setting, while being video recorded for reference. For the validity algorithm output regarding gait and pedaling variables was statistically compared to the video analysis of the same using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). To investigate the consistency of locomotor behavior across weekdays of the same week, 227 older adults wore the monitoring system under study on their right ankles continuously for a week. Daily gait and pedaling values were correlated across weekdays of the same week also using ICCs. An investigation into the differences in gait variability for the average of 3 weekdays according to the subgroups; age, gender, and BMI was conducted on this sample using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. RESULTS: Three of the four gait validity ICCs were significant (p ≤ 0.019) ranging from 0.267 to 0.778. All pedaling validity variables had ICCs ≥ 0.993 The locomotive consistency study found all 6 daily gait variables significantly (p < 0.001) correlated across 3 weekdays, ranging from 0.534 to 0.914. Three of four ICCs for pedaling consistency variables were significant (p ≤ 0.029) ranging from 0.277 to 0.838. CONCLUSIONS: This study's validity results support this monitoring system's gait and pedaling identification approach. There is also evidence to suggest how the system could improve its real-life locomotive detection validity and potentially diversify its applications. Additionally, based on this dissertation's results, some of people's daily locomotive behaviors remain relatively constant over weekdays during the same week.

Accelerometers are objective monitors of physical activity (PA) that can be used to estimate energy expenditure (EE). Most accelerometer EE estimation equations are based on steady-state data and do not consider excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) after exercise. PURPOSE: To quantify the error in accelerometer EE estimates due to EPOC after varying durations of high-intensity treadmill running. METHODS: Nine young, healthy, recreationally active males participated in three study visits. Visit 1 included a treadmill VO2 peak test to determine the treadmill speed correlating to 80% VO2 peak for visits 2 and 3. Visit 2 included a seated 20-min baseline and three short (30s, 60s, 120s) vigorous treadmill running bouts each followed by 20 minutes of seated rest. Visit 3 included a supine 60-min baseline and a 30-min treadmill running bout followed by 3 hours of supine rest. Twelve EE estimation equations each using either a non-dominant wrist or right hip ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometer were compared to the true EE measured by the Parvomedics TrueOne 2400 indirect calorimeter. RESULTS: The Freedson 1998 EE estimation equation overestimated EE during the 20min post-exercise period after each exercise bout (mean kCals [95% CIs]; 30s: 19.3 [11.4, 27.2], 60s: 16.6 [8.5, 24.7], 120s: 13.4 [5.74, 21.1], 30min: 15.1 [6.69, 23.5]). The Crouter 2009 branching algorithm underestimated EE during the 20min post-exercise period after each exercise bout (mean kCals [95% CIs]; 30s: -8.59 [-10.6, -6.62], 60s: -11.6 [-13.7, -9.38], 120s: -15.0 [-18.1, -11.8], 30min: -11.0 [-14.3, -7.77]), but was partially corrected by adding in the measured EPOC. CONCLUSION: Estimated EE during lying or seated rest from linear accelerometer equations was heavily dependent on the y-intercept of the equation, which represents the estimated resting EE of the wearer, with the Crouter calibration study being the only one to directly measure resting EE. More sophisticated approaches, like the Crouter 2009 and newer machine learning algorithms, have better potential to more accurately estimate EE across various activity types. New accelerometer EE estimations should include resting in their calibration protocols in order to more accurately estimate EE during rest.

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