Trends, Perspectives, Opportunities, and Challenges with Sensor Technology in Wintersports
Thomas Stöggl, Cory Snyder, Michael Buchecker, Christoph Thorwartl (2025): Trends, Perspectives, Opportunities, and Challenges with Sensor Technology in Wintersports In: Proceedings of 10th International Congress on Science and Skiing.
Recent developments in sensor technology have made sensing units cheaper and easier to implement. These developments have made the application of “wearable technology”, or smart sporting equipment appealing to a broad audience allowing measuring metrics of motion quantity (e.g. distance, time, number of cycles) and motion quality, or how well a sport technique is performed. In the current presentation the concept of an instrumented ski boot, an instrumented alpine ski using the PyzoFlex® sensor foil technology and the determination of force components and measures of effectiveness within various cross-country skiing (XCS) techniques applying a push-off model is presented.
The Atomic connected boot consists of an IMU mounted on the shaft of the boot. With this concept macroscopic metrics like turn detection, turn count (1) and jump detection (2) were developed while on a more microscopic level a skiing style detection algorithm and carving score concept (3) was established to determine the skiing/carving quality while skiing. Ski deflection is a performance-relevant factor in alpine skiing and the segmental and temporal curvature characteristics along the ski have lately received particular attention. Recently, a PyzoFlex® ski deflection measurement prototype was introduced that demonstrates high reliability and validity in both static and dynamic situations both in the laboratory (bending machine, bending robot, vibration measures) and in the field while skiing (4).
The primary mechanical determinant of XCS performance is the propulsive force from both skis and poles represented by the force components along the skiing direction. The determination of force components, the relative contributions of upper-and-lower-body work to propulsion and the translation of resultant forces into propulsive forces (effectiveness) is of interest from a general locomotor perspective but also for coaches and athletes to choose situation dependent the appropriate skiing technique, to develop more effective techniques and to tailor the general conditioning program according to the biomechanics of the single XCS techniques. In various studies resultant forces were recorded using pressure insoles, force bindings, force systems integrated into skis and poles. Force components were determined by track integrated force plates or combinations of resultant forces with 3D kinematic measures. Here we present a model to determine force components, effectiveness, upper vs. lower body contribution based on leg and pole forces and 3D kinematics in various XCS techniques.
In all presented concepts the challenge lies in further developments for integration into non-obtrusive technologies in communication with conventional measuring devices (e.g. smart watch, training app) allowing for enhanced quality of training/competition metrics, feedback systems assisting in technique training, support for ski equipment selection and equipment customization etc.
