COD experiments

Orientation tracking of a moving object has a wide
variety of applications, including but not limited to military,
surgical aid, navigation systems, mobile robots, gaming, virtual
reality, and gesture recognition. In this article, a novel algorithm
is presented to automatically track and quantify change of
direction (COD) incident angles or heading angles (i.e. turning
angles) of a moving athlete using the inertial sensor signals from
a microtechnology unit (an inertia measurement unit (IMU))
commonly used in elite sport. The algorithm is also capable
of automatically classifying a COD incident according to the
degree of the turn and the direction of the turn (left or
right). The system involves (a) the accurate determination of
the heading angle using IMU sensor fusion and (b) the use of

an algorithm to detect and categorize all changes in angle using
various signal computation processing techniques. This article
presents the algorithm to detect changes in angle and subsequent
categorization. The algorithm is intended to accurately quantify
changes in mechanical loading (angle) during COD incidents,
which may present a new perspective in the monitoring of athletes
for performance enhancement and injury prevention purposes.