Design and application of a multidimensional acceleration sensor for coaching of shot-put athletes

Kinetic information acquisition is paramount for the analysis and guidance of athletic sports. This paper presents a shockproof accelerometer-embedded shot, called digital-shot, developed for the acquisition of the multidimensional acceleration simultaneously from the motion of the shot-put for advanced training of field athletes. It has been designed and manufactured to meet the standard in external dimensions and weight specified by the International Association of Athletics Federations for open females. Using wavelet transformation, the characteristics of acceleration signals during the pushing phase can be extracted to provide constructive guidance for athletes to improve their skills. It also functions as a new platform for the development of advanced shot-put athletes training and coaching system and for the research of human motion modeling. The system has been validated in field experiment showing its feasibility, accuracy and effectiveness.