Measurement systems

We carried out a literature search between October 2012 and January 2013 and between December 2016 and February 2017. Both searches were performed in the databases of Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar using combinations of the keywords of the following three groups. Group 1: measure, analyze, system; Group 2: kinematic, motion, force, coordinate, rotation, orientation, location, position, velocity, speed, acceleration; Group 3: sport, skating, cycling, football, track, field, running, tennis, swimming, hockey, baseball, basketball, skiing and rowing. The search was limited to papers in the English language and published in peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings. Additional literature was obtained through the reference lists of selected papers.

The abstracts of the retrieved papers were read to verify whether a human motion capture system was used in the work. We focused on papers that use measurement systems in a sport experimental setting. If this was not the case, the paper was excluded from further investigation. The remaining papers were read to obtain information about the accuracy of the measurement system and the context for which this accuracy was determined (environmental conditions, test set-up, type of motion and error definition). If the paper did not include an accuracy evaluation in the experimental context, we tried to retrieve this information from studies referenced by the paper. This information was then included, although not always determined in a sport context, and therefore marked in the results section. If no peer-reviewed papers were found on the accuracy, the paper and system were left out of further evaluation.

The specifications in terms of the practical and technological difficulties associated with the types of measurement systems are highly dependent on their physical working principles. In human motion capture we distinguished five working principles: optoelectronic measurement systems (OMS), electromagnetic measurement systems (EMS), image processing systems (IMS), ultrasonic localization systems (UMS), and inertial sensory systems (IMU).