Quantification of Error Sources with Inertial Measurement Units in Sports - Data and Matlab Scripts

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) offer the possibility to capture the lower body motions of players of outdoor team sports. However, various sources of error are present when using IMUs: the definition of the body frames, the soft tissue artefact (STA) and the orientation filer. Methods to minimize these errors are currently being used without knowing their exact influence on the various sources of errors. The goal of this study was to quantify each of the sources of error of an IMU separately. An optoelectronic system was used as a golden standard. Rigid marker clusters (RMCs) were designed to construct a rigid connection between the IMU and four markers. This allowed for the separate quantification of each of the sources of error. Ten subjects performed nine different trials, varying both in type of movement and in movement intensity. The error of the definition of the body frames (10.9-18.1 deg RMSD), the STA (3.6-9.4 deg RMSD) and the error of the orientation filter (2.8- 13.1 deg RMSD) were all quantified separately. The data and code to process the data can be found in this publication.