Computer-assisted self-training system for sports exercise using kinects

Self-training plays an important role in sports exercise. However, if not under the instruction of a coach, improper training postures can cause serious harm to muscles and ligaments of the body. Hence, the development of computer-assisted self-training systems for sports exercise is a recently emerging research topic. In this paper, we propose a Yoga self-training system, entitled YogaST, which aims at instructing the user/practitioner to perform the asana (Yoga posture) correctly and preventing injury caused by improper postures. Involving professional Yoga training knowledge, YogaST analyzes the practitioner´s posture from both front and side views using two Kinects with perpendicular viewing directions and assists him/her in rectifying bad postures. The contour, skeleton, and feature axes of the human body are extracted as posture representation. Then, YogaST analyzes the practitioner´s posture and presents visualized instruction for posture rectification so that the practitioner can easily understand how to adjust his/her posture.