S&D. Integration of sport and design for innovative systems. Application to a swimmer wearable integrated monitoring system For innovative training

The swimsuit project aims to designed innovative textile solutions to create a sensorized and functional swimwear for athletes who engage in amateur swimming or racing. This allows both to optimize the performance and training methods, and to monitor health conditions. Moreover, with some simplifications, the system can be used in different areas: in addition to other sports, telemedicine and safety at work. For example, in a clinical setting it may be useful to monitor cardio-respiratory diseases, which include a wide range of diseases and affect a significant percentage of the population with major impact on health spending. The wearable monitor is offered as a solution to reduce these costs as part of the expansion of telemedicine services. The new generation of sensors costume will monitor in real time during training in water: Hearth rate; Breathing rate; 3-D Accelerations; Stroke number (hands & feet); Poolside timing. Design was done in four phases: textile electrode performance validation; motion and style detection validation; swimsuit design and experimental validation. The validation of textile electrode was performed to verify the correspondence in terms of amplitude and shape between signal acquired with textile electrodes and the generated one. Even after varying amplitude and frequency of the generated signal, no differences were encountered (average R2 = 0.9988±0.00041), both in the pattern and in the amplitude of the measured signal. Thus this demonstrates the theoretical reliability of the textile electrodes. Taking into account the movements of swimmer, for validation of motion and style detection have been selected four positions of the body: on the central axis of the body just below the chest; on the central axis of the body in the middle of the back; on the central axis of the body in the lumbar region of the back; in correspondence with the right or left hip. After analyzing the obtained results was chosen the best locations for placing the accelerometer (in the lumbar region of the back). Swimsuit was designed for all, in a simple way so that everyone can to use, athletes as well as lovers of swimming. The experimental validation of prototyping product showed the correctness of obtained results.