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The review article by Tschentscher et al.[24] gave a high level overview of Nordic walking benefits. It gave brief insight on the analysis taken, but did not provide enough details on materials and methods.[24] This was important for the project, thus it was required to manually analyse the full research papers relevant. Almost all the research determined that Nordic walking is beneficial in some capacity.

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Many papers were examined to get a better grasp of what was required in the current research environment and how our project could be used to fill gaps or enrich research in meaningful ways. The research helped to justify which direction to take for the development of the nordic walking stick. The intention is to survey the research and get a better understanding of the tools, materials, methods and conclusions in regards to nordic walking. 

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Overall there are 3 categories of research and we have coined terms to make references to their classes in a more succinct manner. These are not official or generally accepted terms, rather they are our own terms for the purposes of this project:

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Prescriptive Research

 This was the majority of the papers, and they all followed a similar prescription style format with the rough steps:

1. Take participants baseline measurements

2. Prescribe Nordic Walking

3. Participants are trained regularly with a Nordic Walking expert

4. Take participant measurements periodically

This class of research, all examined cardiovascular parameters such as heart rate and VO2 max (maximum rate of oxygen consumption). Some of the research examined other factors and utilized sensors in their methods:

• Some papers utilized force platform or device of some sort that tracked pressure either through the pole or foot of participants. [ 15 ] [ 23 ] [ 21 ] [ 1] 

• Other research utilized positional data using accelerometers for either the poles or the participants bodies themselves to track positional data.[23] [25] [26] [22] [21] 

These were the general trends for this category of research. There were variances on what was measured in the experiment as each paper had a different focus. The importance is to understand what the overall trend is. Additionally, it is interesting to note that none of the research papers in this category tracked participants via sensor for the entirety of their time while Nordic walking. Instead only periodic measurements were made. This is likely due to the cost of the sensors used and the cost involved with real time monitoring of all participants for a long duration.

 

Biomechanical Research

Biomechanical research describes research that was done in order to track body mechanics related to Nordic walking, typically using Electromyography (EMG) analysis to track muscle activation.

The biomechanical research was largely all conducted with EMG devices that measure muscle activity electronically. These papers helped to give insight on the biomechanics of Nordic Walking and how to apply sensors to better track certain aspects. The papers were particularly interested in form and some stating that form had quite a marked effect on the results of Nordic walking. These papers fully tracked the participants and measured them for the entirety of the experiment [2 ] [ 7]  [ 3 ] [ 16 ] [ 25 ][26] [22] [21]

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Hardware Research

The hardware based research was quite limited. This survey was done to examine what solutions were already implemented in regards to making a "Smart" Nordic walking pole. Only two papers were found that resembled what we seek for our project. These will help guide us such that we can learn from them and expand upon them. [14][17]

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Our First Iteration of the Solution

After examining the current research trends we have identified some gaps. Firstly, participants are almost never measured long-term and real-time for the entirety of their Nordic walking exercise. We want to provide a Nordic walking pole with sensor suites so that users can be measured for the entire time they are Nordic walking for any given experiment, instead of just being measured periodically. The intention is to make the pole robust enough for participants to use, and cost effective so that multiple participants can use one for the duration of any research. In this first iteration the sensors that are planned for implementation as per our research findings are, a heart rate monitor, and pressure sensors on the poles. 

 

Our Unique Take, on the Solution

The research has shown that form can be a determining factor on efficacy of Nordic walking. We seek to bridge the gap between the aforementioned prescriptive based research and the biomechanical. Such that form can be tracked with the other common parameters described in much of the prescriptive research. It is important to note that the sensor suite should be able to assist in both research individually, but also provide an intersection point of measurement. This allows for a more diverse set of use cases of the device while only marginally increasing complexity.

Since a Nordic walking pole with sensors has already been done[14][17], our own approach to solving the problem in a unique way is to focus on implementing form tracking and maintenance via sensors. The Nordic walking pole will have additional implements that will help the user maintain form parameters. E.g If the participant has left knee injury, the pole can guide the user to put 5% body weight to the pole on the side of the injured left knee, and 15% body weight on the other. The implements that will help the user maintain form can be devices such as haptic feedback on the handle or led that flashes a certain color. It will also help researchers collect a richer data set.

 

Additional benefits

Since the Nordic walking poles will be an Internet of Things (IoT) device, researchers can interact with it real time remotely, and can read the stream of data coming from the pole when in use. Additionally, a researcher can opt to upload different form parameters to the participant and track them real time. E.g if the participant is seeing minimal upper body changes, the researcher can upload form parameters remotely to the pole, guiding the user to put 10% more body weight on the pole.

 

Even more benefits..

Although not our intention after the pivot, this particular solution can segue quite easily into a commercial product, and data could potentially be streamed to a medical professional/ physiotherapist which can then alter form parameters to ensure the user are conducting Nordic walking with optimal form. In essences it can be a smart walking pole that helps track your form, and improve it to get the most out of nordic walking. This is not the goal of our project, but we can structure things in such a way, in terms of the solution such that the effort to cross this bridge is minimized. This is especially enhanced if research is done on the device. This is beyond the scope of what we seek to achieve, but it is interesting to consider as we progress.

 

We hope that the smart Nordic Walking pole will provide finer granularity of data collection for researchers and improve upon the current Nordic walking research meta. 

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