Development of wearable IoT-Based front kicking angle monitoring device

Abstract

In this paper, a wearable front kicking angle monitoring device using flex sensor and Internet of Things (IoT) platform has been successfully developed and tested. The Arduino NodeMCU microcontroller processes and converts the input received from the flex sensor and transmits the real time front kicking angle and corresponding resistance data to the two main outputs; the ThingSpeak IoT platform and the LCD display for real monitoring. Thirty participants were recruited from two different backgrounds; silat athletes (n=20) and non-athlete participants (n=10). The participants were distributed into six weight categories: 50-55 kg, 55-60 kg, 60-65 kg, 65-70 kg, 70-75 kg and 75-80 kg. Based on the average angle measured from three trials, it can be observed that different participants had different averages and standard deviations for front kicking angle independently of weight category. Moreover, the background factor of the subjects involved did not greatly contribute in this research, as the participants from non-athlete background had the highest mean of front kicking angle (73.89 ± 17.41°). This situation is probably due to a lack of standard kicking styles set for all participants at the beginning of the experiment. Nonetheless, one conclusive remark that can be derived from the findings is the front kicking angle of an individual is greatly influenced by body weight, since the (75-80 kg) weight category achieved the lowest mean angle of front kicking for both backgrounds; non-athlete (14.00± 1.33°) and athlete (23.89± 6.44°) subjects. In the future, additional sensors such as accelerometer can be used to predict the stability of the body for better evaluation of front kicking angle.