Increasing Measurement Agreement Between Different Instruments in Sports Environments: A Jump Height Estimation Case Study

The assessment of physical quantity values, especially in case of sports-related activities, is critical to evaluate the performance and fitness level of athletes. In real-world applications, motion analysis tools are often employed to assess motor performance in subjects. In case the methods used to calculate a specific quantity of interest differ from each other, different values may be provided as output. Therefore, there is the need to get a coherent final measurement, giving the possibility to compare results homogeneously, combining the different methodologies used by the instruments. These tools vary in measurement capabilities and the physical principles underlying the measurement procedures. Emerging differences in results could lead to non-uniform evaluation metrics, thus making a fair comparison unpracticable. A possible solution to this problem is provided in this paper by implementing an iterative approach, working on two measurement time series acquired by two different instruments, specifically focused on jump height estimation. In the analyzed case study, two instruments estimate the jump height exploiting two different technologies: the inertial and the vision-based ones. In the first case, the measurement value depends on the movement of the center of gravity during jump activity, while, in the second case, the jump height is derived by estimating the maximum distance ground–foot during the jump action. These approaches clearly could lead to different values, also considering the same jump test, due to their observation point. The developed methodology can provide three different ways out: (i) mapping the inertial values towards the vision-based reference system; (ii) mapping the vision-based values towards the inertial reference system; (iii) determining a comprehensive measurement, incorporating both contributions, thus making measurements comparable in time (performance progression) and space (comparison among subjects), eventually adopting only one of the analyzed instruments and applying the transformation algorithm to get the final measurement value.