The On-water Instrumentation of a Sprint Canoe Paddle

Abstract

A fully instrumented on-water sprint canoe system was designed, built, and tested. The system consists of: one 6-axis load cell in the paddle shaft at the blade, one inertial measuring unit (IMU) on the paddle, one IMU on the boat, and one GPS unit on the canoe boat. These sensors communicated wirelessly to a laptop where the data was processed and displayed in real-time. The sensors were rigorously tested and well-measured in their satisfactory accuracy. The system can provide a full decomposition of the blade water force into propulsive (forward/aft), side, and vertical forces. Previous systems for canoe have been extremely simple and rudimentary. There has been more effort in the rowing and kayak systems but they still failed to capture a full force profile.

On-water tests with national-level athletes examined a wide variety of sprint canoe strokes at different paces, power inputs, rates, and stroke lengths. The measurement system could clearly see the differences in force profiles between the stroke sets. A number of efficiency measures were developed using the available data. Instantaneous and integral in-stroke force ratios were developed based on the blade's propulsive force to total force proportion. Derived stroke averaged efficiencies also provided more information. These produced measurements of energy/impulse input to the boat's propulsion output. Differences in such efficiencies could be clearly seen in the various collected stroke sets.

This system will be highly useful to high performance athletes and coaches for modifying athlete technique. It has potential for improving equipment design and matching athletes to optimal blade styles. More academically, it can assist biomechanical assessments of sprint canoe and numerical flow studies around blades.