Journal of Big Data (May 2023)

Unified platform for storing, retrieving, and analysing biomechanical applications data using graph database

  • Matevž Hribernik,
  • Sašo Tomažič,
  • Anton Umek,
  • Anton Kos

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-023-00747-y
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 18

Abstract

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Abstract Sensors and smart equipment are frequently used in biomechanical systems and applications in sports and rehabilitation to measure various physical quantities. Various sensors, measuring different parameters, can produce a large amount of data at high speeds and volumes that must be stored for real-time or post-processing and analysis. In addition to sensor data, metadata is an important component and can vary between biomechanical applications. Currently however, each application typically has its own unique data flow and storage solution. In this research, we present a universal data model solution that can be applied to any sensor-based biomechanical application in sport and physical rehabilitation. Our proposed cloud platform architecture allows for the manipulation of sensor data and metadata using a combination of Big Data and conventional techniques. The main idea of this research is to develop a platform that allows a universal way for any biomechanical application to handle its data regardless of the type of data and metadata. This is achieved by creating a universal data model, and implementing this data model in a generalized architecture using a graph database. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach using examples from existing biomechanical systems and describe the development of the cloud platform architecture and the underlying data model. We also provide an example of the use of this platform in a sport shooting application. This approach is unique in that it allows data from different sources and applications to be stored and processed using the same procedures and techniques, facilitating data analysis and application development. We envision this system will expand to multiple different biomechanical applications in the future. We expect that in time, the ability to compare various data and store different biomechanical datasets will become necessity. With the advantages of modern recommender systems and utilization of artificial intelligence, huge amounts of relevant and well-prepared data with useful metadata are required thus having such system is an important advantage for future biomechanical systems development. With the increase of people’s awareness and usage of devices that increase well-being and quality of life, presented platform and similar systems will play a pivotal role in shaping the future lifestyle.

Keywords