Potential Skating-Related Research Topic Brainstorm

[Triinkii]

Hi friends!

I'm entering my final year of electrical engineering next year, and need to think up a thesis topic (yes, half a year away and I'm thinking ahead!). I enjoy the field of signal processing, and am curious to see if I could use this as an excuse to visit the rink more often. Does anyone have any potential thesis research ideas that I could suggest to a university supervisor (suitable for an undergraduate, ideally some aspect has been done before so I could use for literature review/inspiration)? Here are some sample thoughts I currently have:

• Taking videos of skaters doing their elements and analysing their body positions to determine their centre of mass (analysing videos, essentially - which is what coaches do by eye anyway, I wonder if it could be beneficial to have a system do it for you?)
• The same as above, but using sensors on the skaters to recreate the video digitally for analysis (would this make it easier or harder to analyse?)
• Pressure sensor insoles for boots that give live feedback to how much relative pressure they are applying to each part of the insole during a move (not sure how useful this may be)

Please feel free to build on these, or suggest your own ideas. All are welcome, as long as they include some digital analysis component. Bonus points if you could direct me to some relevant resources.
Also feel free to support/disagree to the usefulness of doing a thesis in this area. It is often said that nothing beats having a coach watch you skate and giving live feedback... Thoughts?

[AgnesNitt]

See if the resistance to an electrical charge to a blade changes as the skater changes as a skater does different elements and or ROH.

Two alligator clips, some wire and a portable recording voltmeter and a camera

[tstop4me]

Just run a Google search on "sensors on figure skate blades".  There have been several studies using sensors attached to figure skate blades.  I recall once seeing a patent on a blade equipped with sensors.  There was also a group in Italy that did video analysis of skaters using a turntable spinner.  And there was a biomechanical engineering prof at MIT (?) who did computer simulations of quad jumps.  If you can't find what you need, let me know, and I'll try to dig up specific references.