Measurement system powered by energy harvester for Nordic Walking performance monitoring

Nordic Walking is a sport discipline that has seen a growing interest in the last years. It is a modified version of the standard walk where the athlete uses a pair of specific poles in order to improve the performance during his progression using actively the upper body muscles. In this paper a pair of instrumented poles and its application in the monitoring of both the major physical quantities useful to study the proper technique and the main physiological parameters is shown. These sticks are equipped with a patented electromagnetic energy harvester system which allows longer outdoor monitoring sessions due to the low energy consumptions of the overall data acquisition system. Finally a dedicated software has been developed in order to store and analyze data read on different sessions.