Capstone Project

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Group 2021-22 Status completed
Title Power-Measuring Nordic Skiing Equipment
Supervisor Glenn Cowan
Description Electronics products have revolutionized high-performance training techniques across many sports. For example, chest-strap equipped and now wrist-based heart-rate monitors are standard equipment across most endurance sports, setting training zones and providing a measurement of recovery time. More recently, power meters have greatly influenced cycling both in terms of training and racing (i.e., pacing). Developing athletes know quantitatively how much they must improve before reaching elite-level fitness. To date, heart-rate monitors are used in training for Cross-Country (Nordic) skiing, but power measurement has not been possible. In this project your group will develop a power-measuring system, outfitting either ski poles OR rollerskis with the necessary IMUs and strain gauges to not only measure force, but also compute power, as delivered by the skier to the equipment. The group will determine the required data signals, their sampling rates and a means to synchronize left-side/right-side and possibly centre of mass measurements in order to allow the app your groups develops to compute power. The objective is to have the power, averaged over a gait cycle or two displayed in real time on an app, as well as to log this in a file. Some preliminary work has been done; the selected group will be encouraged to use the same microcontroller, instrumentation amplifiers if they see fit.
Requirement Microcontrollers, load-cells/strain gauges, instrumentation amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters, use of Bluetooth or similar protocol to get data from the equipment to the phone App development to generate a rudimentary app for a smart phone Knowledge of free-body diagrams and willingness to extend 1D concepts to 3D. Interest in sports generally or Nordic skiing specifically is an asset
Tools Building PCBs, soldering, design of the enclosures, LTSpice for some circuit simulation
Number of Students 6
Students Thamina Akther, Simarjit Bilkhu, Matthew Moreno, Domenico Giancola, Nicholas Gidaro, Farouq HamedAllah
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