The latest addition to equipment at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences (RISES), Liverpool John Moores University, is a full-body Xsens MTw Awinda system. Within the Biomechanics Group, Dr Gabor Barton leads the Clinical Biomechanics research theme revolving around virtual rehabilitation and clinical movement analysis. MTw Awinda will be integrated in research projects initially, through collaboration with clinical partners in the NHS and beyond.
Development of the award winning Goblin Post Office virtual rehabilitation game prompted the addition of Xsens MTx in 2009 to the list of input devices feeding real-time movement data to Motek Medical’s CAREN system. The ambitious but realistic intention is now to raise the game to a new level by streaming MTw Awinda data to drive more elaborate virtual environments in the CAREN system.
Dr. Barton commented: “Having just been through MTw Awinda training by a product specialist of Xsens, we are all impressed by the rapid preparation of the test subject and the intuitive Xsens MVN Studio Pro software. Literally in minutes we had a live full-body avatar on the screen and the data could be recorded and exported to .C3D format which we use routinely with Visual3D. It will take a while to understand the exact details of how MTw Awinda works but we have already noticed a number of creative and thoughtful hardware and software tricks which simply make the system work smoothly. There is a lot of exciting work ahead of us with MTw Awinda but we have already shown off our new “gadget” at the University’s open day and to a high profile visitor from the UK Government touring our laboratories.”
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