Trajectory determination and analysis in sports by satellite and inertial navigation

This research presents methods for performance analysis in sports through the integration of Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements with Inertial Navigation System (INS). The described approach focuses on strapdown inertial navigation using Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) Inertial Measurement Units (IMU). A simple inertial error model is proposed and its relevance is proven by comparison to reference data. The concept is then extended to a setup employing several MEMS-IMUs in parallel. The performance of the system is validated with experiments in skiing and motorcycling. The position accuracy achieved with the integrated system varies from decimeter level with dual-frequency differential GPS (DGPS) to 0.7 m for low-cost, single-frequency DGPS. Unlike the position, the velocity accuracy (0.2 m/s) and orientation accuracy (1 – 2 deg) are almost insensitive to the choice of the receiver hardware. The orientation performance, however, is improved by 30 – 50% when integrating four MEMS-IMUs in skew-redundant configuration. Later part of this research introduces a methodology for trajectory comparison. It is shown that trajectories based on dual-frequency GPS positions can be directly modeled and compared using cubic spline smoothing, while those derived from single-frequency DGPS require additional filtering and matching.