A Mobile Application for Improving Running Performance Using Interactive Sonification

Abstract: Apps that assist long-distance runners have become popular, however most of them focus on results that come from calculations based on distance and time. To become a better runner, an improvement of both the body posture and running gait is required. Using sonic feedback to improve performance in different sports applications has become an established research area during the last two decades. Sonic feedback is particularly well suited for activities where the user has to maintain a visual focus on something, for example when running. The goal of this project was to implement a mobile application that addresses long-distance runners’ body posture and running gait. By decreasing the energy demand for a specific velocity, the runner’s performance can be improved. The application makes use of the sensors in a mobile phone to analyze the runner’s vertical force, step frequency, velocity and body tilt, together with a sonification of those parameters in an interactive way by altering the music that the user is listening to. The implementation was made in the visual programming language Pure Data together with MobMuPlat, which enables the use of Pure Data in a mobile phone. Tests were carried out with runners of different levels of experience, the results showed that the runners could interact with the music for three of the four parameters but more training is required to be able to change the running gait in real-time.