Recognizing Full-Body Exercise Execution Errors Using the Teslasuit

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 21; no. 24; p. 8389
• Main Authors: Caserman, Polona, Krug, Clemens, Göbel, Stefan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 15.12.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Accelerometers; COVID-19; Exercise; Feedback; full-body motion capture; haptic feedback; Haptics; human exercise assessment; Humans; imitation learning; inertial measurement units; Machine learning; Motion; Motion capture; Motor Skills; Movement; Physical fitness; Rehabilitation; Sensors; Training; transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation; haptic feedback; imitation learning; human exercise assessment; transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation; full-body motion capture; inertial measurement units
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s21248389

Regular physical exercise is essential for overall health; however, it is also crucial to mitigate the probability of injuries due to incorrect exercise executions. Existing health or fitness applications often neglect accurate full-body motion recognition and focus on a single body part. Furthermore, they often detect only specific errors or provide feedback first after the execution. This lack raises the necessity for the automated detection of full-body execution errors in real-time to assist users in correcting motor skills. To address this challenge, we propose a method for movement assessment using a full-body haptic motion capture suit. We train probabilistic movement models using the data of 10 inertial sensors to detect exercise execution errors. Additionally, we provide haptic feedback, employing transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation immediately, as soon as an error occurs, to correct the movements. The results based on a dataset collected from 15 subjects show that our approach can detect severe movement execution errors directly during the workout and provide haptic feedback at respective body locations. These results suggest that a haptic full-body motion capture suit, such as the Teslasuit, is promising for movement assessment and can give appropriate haptic feedback to the users so that they can improve their movements.