Wearable Sensing for Solid Biomechanics

Understanding the solid biomechanics of the human body is important to the study of structure and function of the body, which can have a range of applications in healthcare, sport, wellbeing, and workflow analysis. Conventional laboratorybased biomechanical analysis systems and observation-based tests are only designed to capture brief snapshots of the mechanics of movement. With recent developments in wearable sensing technologies, biomechanical analysis can be conducted in less constrained environments, thus allowing continuous monitoring and analysis beyond laboratory settings. In this paper, we review the current research in wearable sensing technologies for biomechanical analysis, focusing upon sensing and analytics that enable continuous, long-term monitoring of kinematics and kinetics in a free-living environment. The main technical challenges, including measurement drift, external interferences, nonlinear sensor properties, sensor placement, and muscle variations that can affect the accuracy and robustness of existing methods, and different methods for reducing the impact of these sources of errors are described in this review. Recent developments in motion estimation in kinematics, mobile force sensing in kinematics, sensor reduction for electromyography, as well as the future direction of sensing for biomechanics are also discussed.