Acquiring the Distance Data with Inertial Measurement Unit in a Wearable Device for the Training of Hammer Throwers

This paper demonstrates a continuing task of our previous research. We have implemented a wireless sensor system and applied the wearable sensor device in several training sessions of our university hammer throwers. There is an optical distance sensor used in our previous wireless sensor system. The initial conception is to use the distance sensor to collect the vertical hip displacement. However, through the field tests, it has been found that keeping the distance sensor pointing vertically towards the ground is impossible during a hammer throw performance. Therefore, we propose to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) as a motion tracking sensor to replace the distance sensor.