Medidor de potência fisiológica para ciclistas: desenvolvimento do protótipo

Abstract

This work aims to develop a prototype of a physiological power meter used in cycling and triathlon. The importance of measuring data from the physical and physiological condition of the athlete has become most important, providing the basis for decision taking and strategy for training and competition, and temporal assessments. Currently power is the best way for evaluation of physical and physiological conditioning in sports using bicycles, because is a magnitude that is not influenced by external factors to the sport, as emotion, food, etc. The athlete analysis may be complete when power is compared to other quantities such as for example, heart rate, speed and PES (perceived exertion). The prototype development was conducted with study Extensometria for measuring force and momentum, inertial sensors for measuring cadence, signal conditioning, microcontrollers for processing the data and perform the calculations and Bluetooth communication for data transmission. The force and torque measurements were divided into two analyzes: quantitative and angle, and the angle through analysis yielded the region of 90 ° (crank angle) as the best for the application of force; already by a quantitative analysis gave the characteristic equation depending on the voltage applied torque. The cadence measurements were validated through video analysis. Based on the practical values of torque and cadence obtained in the laboratory, the power of the seven samples was calculated, and the maximum power value of 317,82W, average power 257,69W and minimum power 190,13W. In addition to the practical results, we obtained some results in the academic field, namely: two publications in technical conferences, intellectual property protection (patent) registered under BR protocol 10 2015 018 633 9 along the INPI and an undergraduate student. For future work, the objectives are to validate the product, collect data in training situations and competitions, researching the influence of extreme conditions of use (temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.). It follows then that the objective was achieved and that its results were satisfactory for the development of the prototype.