Interaction forces in climbing: cost-efficient complementation of a 6dof instrumentation

Abstract

To comprehensively analyse interaction forces in climbing, a fully instrumented climbing route has been requested but only once been realised, probably due to financial burdens. Thus, the objective of this work was to elaborate the potential of a one-dimensional force sensor to analyse interaction forces. Based on experimental data gained with our 6 degrees of freedom (6dof) instrumentation, we simulated a 1dof instrumentation. Performance metrics were extracted from both instrumentations. An equivalence test of extracted metrics revealed that a 1dof instrumentation is sufficient to analyse interaction forces when a distinctive loading direction is present at the hold. Consequently, we developed a 2dof instrumentation avoiding an unpractical alignment to the loading direction in the plane of the wall. This 2dof instrumentation can now be used to cost efficiently complement the 6dof instrumentation, in particular, in terms of monitoring interaction forces at holds with a distinctive loading direction within the plane of the climbing wall, e.g. foot holds and crimps.

Keywords::

• sport climbing performance
• sensor reduction
• equivalence
• two one-sided test strategy

Acknowledgements

We want to thank Andreas Schweizer for his enriching comments; Marco Bader, Michael Herold-Nadig, Alessandro Rotta, and Robert Spörri for their indispensable mechatronic contributions to the design of both the 6dof and 2dof instrumentation; Luca Lörtscher and Stefan Seiterle for their help conducting and analysing the experiments with the athletes; the athletes for participating; and Andrew Pennycott for proof reading. The development of the 6dof instrumentation was supported by the Eidgenössische Sportkommission (ESKNr. 11-08).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.