Identifying the beginning of a kayak race using velocity signal data

Abstract: A kayak is a small watercraft that moves over the water. The kayak is propelled by a person sitting inside of the hull and paddling using a double-bladed paddle. While kayaking can be casual, it is used as a competitive sport in races and even the Olympic games. Therefore, it is important to be able to analyse athletes’ performance during the race. To study the race better, some kayaking teams and organizations have attached sensors to their kayaks. These sensors record various data, which is later used to generate performance reports. However, to generate such reports, the coach must manually pinpoint the beginning of the race because the sensors collect data before the actual race begins, which may include practice runs, warming-up sessions, or just standing and waiting position. The identification of the race start and the race sequence in the data is tedious and time-consuming work and could be automated. This project proposes an approach to identify kayak races from velocity signal data with the help of a machine learning algorithm. The proposed approach is a combination of several techniques: signal preprocessing, a machine learning algorithm, and a programmatic approach. Three machine learning algorithms were evaluated to detect the race sequence, which are Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbour (kNN), and Random Forest (RF). SVM outperformed other algorithms with an accuracy of 95%. Programmatic approach was proposed to identify the start time of the race. The average error of the proposed approach is 0.24 seconds. The proposed approach was utilized in the implemented web-based application with a user interface for coaches to automatically detect the beginning of a kayak race and race signal sequence.