First Testing Session

The Trigno sensors were placed onto Andrei’s legs in the six various muscles the Air Sleeve targets. Andrei then jumped in front of a measuring tape that was placed on the wall, his jumps were filmed in slow motion to determine actual maximal jump height which was later used to compare accuracy of the Air Sleeve’s estimation of jump height.

Figure 1: Andrei jumping with the sensors to provide initial jump data

To estimate maximal height EMG Works software was used. The software directly generated acceleration time graphs based on muscle activity in the x, y and z directions for each sensor.

These graphs were then observed in order to find when the peak force occurred as this signals the start of a jump, a second peak was also observed to occur when the test subject lands back on the ground after their jump. The average velocity of the jumper during the jump was found by calculating the area under the curve between the aforementioned peaks. Once average velocity was obtained it was multiplied by half the time between peaks in order to find peak height.

An example Acceleration time graph can be seen below in Figure 1, the initial jump occurs at the first peak at 4.1 seconds and the landing occurs at the second peak at 4.5 seconds.

Figure 2: Rectus Femoris Acceleration Time Graph (Y direction)