Wearable Platform for Tennis Players Performance Monitoring: a Proof of Concept

The rising interest in sport performance analysis, along with advancements in wearable sensor technology, has enabled the development of innovations dedicated to sports performance monitoring. In the present work, we present preliminary results about a developed device for tennis performance monitoring. The device's hardware consists of 3 modules: 1) a sensor placed on the tennis racket (racket sensor), 2) a sensor worn on the player's chest (chest sensor), 3) multiple sensors embedded in the insole of the player's dominant foot (insole sensor). The device's software analyzes the user's postures and the technical performance, providing real-time feedback through a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). We evaluated the device on a single right-handed male subject in a controlled laboratory environment. The preliminary results demonstrate the platform's successful recognition of forehand and backhand movements, as well as the accurate evaluation on the correctness of the foot load distribution. Additionally, the platform displays warning messages if the racket inclination or hip alignment are incorrect (inclination error and positioning error, respectively). These initial findings demonstrate the device's potential for enhancing tennis training. Further research and testing with a larger and more diverse sample are required to validate the system's capabilities.