Estimating Forces during Exercise Activity Using Non-invasive Kinect Camera

Recognizing errors that may occur during participant exercise performance and reduce the risk of exercise-related injuries is important to improving adherence in wellness management. We demonstrate the feasibility of using Kinect camera for estimating ground reaction forces during a jumping exercise, as an alternative to more expensive and traditionally used force plate platforms. The Kinect camera provides a cost-effective solution for participants in analyzing exercise performance in home-based exercises. The proposed technique, which is based on the conservation of momentum, is easy to implement and can be used to provide feedback to the participant in real-time. Our results indicate that the ground reaction forces that are estimated using the 3D joint data obtained from the Kinect camera closely match the forces obtained using a force plate.