Coastal Talk News | Ahmedabad
What does a good bicep curl look like? Walk into a busy gym, and the answer may vary from one person to the next. Some people learn by watching a trainer, whilst others copy fellow gym-goers or follow videos on their phones. Without regular supervision, beginners may not recognise when their form changes or a movement is being performed incorrectly.
“An experienced coach can often spot such differences quickly. But in a crowded gym or training centre, watching every repetition by every person is difficult,” said Dr Biswajit Saha, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN). “We wondered whether a wearable sensor could provide an additional way to examine movement, even when a coach cannot observe every repetition?”
His research group at the Smart Materials Laboratory explored this question by building small, flexible sensor patches designed for strength training and sports such as tennis and swimming. The patches are now being tested on gym-goers and athletes in real training sessions, and the team is seeking industry and government partners to develop them further.
Placed on selected parts of the body, the patches record electrical changes associated with movement. The underlying principle is called piezoresistive sensing. In these sensors, mechanical deformation changes the electrical resistance. When the body moves, the patch deforms along with the skin and surrounding tissue. That deformation changes the sensor’s electrical response, producing a measurable signal. The signal travels through a small electronic system, where it is sampled and transmitted to a mobile device using Bluetooth. A machine-learning model then examines patterns in those signals and compares them with reference data collected from experienced practitioners, including coaches, trainers, and sportspersons competing at the state and national levels.
“By comparing these patterns with those recorded from experienced practitioners, we aim to provide trainers with additional information to assess exercise and sports performance,” explained Kosha Navnit Vaishnav, a PhD scholar in IITGN’s Department of Chemical Engineering who is part of the research team developing the wearable sensor.
“Findings of the current work are yet to be published,” said Vaishnav. The team has integrated the sensing hardware, data acquisition and analysis into a single platform. “Our prototype is at Technology Readiness Level 5 and is being refined and validated in real training settings, with a patent filing in progress,” she added.
