SmartSwim is a four year PhD research project started in September 2018 conducted by Gait Up along with EPFL (Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement),  CHUV ( Department de l’Appareil Locomoteur) and regional Swimming clubs.

The project is an EPFLinnovators PhD grant, partly co-funded by Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Institute and Doctoral Fellowships of EPFL and involves 20% industrial secondment for the PhD candidate taking place at Gait Up. The secondment focus lies in the aspects that allows to transfer the technology to industry as a product.

The main goal of this project is the design and implementation of an objective assessment wearable system to study swimming, helping both coaches and swimmers to make faster, more efficient progress. Wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU) is a powerful tool to monitor performance of an athlete while practicing sports. Using these sensors, the final measurement package of this project is going to be portable, waterproof as well as minimally obtrusive. The wearable system will be able to detect different swimming phases of all swimming styles and important kinematic parameters of each phase, serving as an assistant for the coaches by providing useful feedbacks for them.