EXPERIMENTAL SETUP TO COLLECT INPUT DATA FOR CALCULATING LOADING ON THE LOWER EXTREMITIES IN SKIING AND SNOWBOARDING

Abstract

Little is known about the loading on the lower extremities in skiing and snowboarding. The reason for this is the difficulty to collect representative 3D kinetic and kinematic data which serves as input to calculate the loading parameters. Field studies in alpine skiing and snowboarding are essential to collect representative data. Full 3D movement reconstruction requires at least three markers in sight of at least two cameras for each segment during the complete movement. It is difficult to fulfill this demand, due to several reasons. The purpose of this study is to describe the experimental setup to collect representative 3D kinetic and kinematic data. A new kinematical method that allows full 3D movement reconstruction with a reduced marker set is introduced. Furthermore, the measuring device for kinetic data is validated. Results show that the proposed experimental setup provides appropriate kinetic and kinematic data in skiing and snowboarding.