MAP: 1 – Page Project and Trial Run
The MAP consists of being able to do a video analysis from scratch. This 1-pg description is mainly designed to focus your question to a particular activity. Please take a look at the corresponding video on D2L before starting this.
What is the physical activity you plan to analyze?
There are no right or wrong answers here – because we are using video analysis, there are two factors that will constrain your choice of activity:
The number of dimensions the movement occurs in– Video analysis means we can only look at 2 dimensions (i.e. left/right and up/down). Any activity that has significant motion in all 3 dimensions cannot be analyzed accurately. Examples of 2D movements are walking, running, vertical jump, dart throwing, basketball free throw, reaching on a table etc. Examples of movements that are 3D are baseball pitching, complex gymnastics/diving maneuvers etc. Avoid 3D movements – if you are in doubt, please ask
Speed of the movement – do not choose extremely rapid movements like a golf swing or a hockey slap shot (unless you have access to a high speed camera). S
Find a published research paper related to the physical activity:
Provide a full citation for this paper (APA format)
Describe the main findings of the paper you have reviewed in your own words in 1 paragraph
To find research articles that are published in Journals, use websites such as Pubmed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) or Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/)
Access to these journals can be obtained through the MSU library website.
Use keywords such as “biomechanics”, “kinematics”, “EMG”, “force plate” etc. along with your physical activity. For example, if you want to examine papers looking at muscle activity during walking in stroke survivors, type in something like “Gait walking EMG stroke”
Develop a research question based on the paper that you have reviewed
The research question must be of the form – “We want to look at the effect of X on Y”
Where X is the factor you manipulate in your experiment (i.e. the independent variable).
Examples of independent variables are age (children vs. adult), sex (male vs. female), expertise (novice vs. expert) etc.
And Y is the biomechanical variable(s) you will measure from the video (i.e. the dependent variables).
Examples of dependent variables are knee angle at landing, range of motion in shoulder flexion-extension, peak hand speed, release angle at take-off, average horizontal velocity of the hip during the jump, etc.
Choose two dependent variables for your experiment
One will be a linear variable (e.g. displacement, velocity etc.)
One will be an angular variable (e.g., angular displacement, angular velocity etc.)
So for example, if you are looking at a squat lift, your research question must be of the form,
“We want to look at the effect of expertise (novice vs. expert) on:
(a) the maximum vertical velocity of the hip during the squat, and
(b) the maximum knee flexion during the squat.”
Describe the anatomical locations you will need to analyze on video (e.g., hip, knee, shoulder etc.)
If you need to compute an angle, you will need to analyze at least 3 points – for example, if you want to compute elbow angle, you need a marker on the shoulder, one on the elbow and one on the wrist
Describe the experiment you plan to do (in one paragraph)
How are you going to control the independent variable?
Who is going to perform the activity? Where will you film the activity?
Describe which angle you will film from (frontal plane, sagittal plane, transverse plane)
Describe any safety precautions you might need to take during filming
Trial Run:
You will also do a quick trial run to make sure you can do all the steps that you proposed. For the trial run, you need to the following steps:
a) Record a calibration video for your movement
b) Record a single video of the movement you want to analyze. For example, if you are comparing expert vs. novice, then just do one of the videos for now
c) Import the calibration and movement videos into Tracker and calibrate the movement video (similar to all labs that you have done on Tracker)
d) Check the calibration using a tape measure (e.g., just like on the labs, you can measure the height of the person using a tape measure to check if your calibration gives a reasonable answer)
e) Analyze the movement you recorded and compute your two dependent variables that you proposed in step 4 (e.g. hip velocity/knee angle etc.). Take a screenshot on Tracker with the graph for each of the corresponding variables (two screenshots total)
You will then submit on D2L
– The TRZ file
OR
– The TRK file AND the associated videos (the mp4 files). Please remember that unlike the labs (where we had the video files), if you just submit a TRK file, we will not be able to check your work on our end without the video file
So for the MAP trial run, you have to submit 2 things:
1. A PDF document answering the 6 questions about your MAP, and two screenshots of the trial run (described in step e)
2. The Tracker files (either TRZ or the TRK+ movie files) for one condition in your MAP
Please note that the MAP trial run is meant to help you get started with the work required to do the final project correctly. This component itself will not be graded – instead we will provide feedback about what things to fix on the final project. So please don’t worry if something is not ‘perfect’ now – the goal is to be able to get used to the steps involved and use the feedback to do well on the final project
