2.671: measurement and instrumentation (spring 2014)

This lab class teaches the basics of data acquisition and analysis of physical phenomena such as force, strain, and frequency.  The highlight of the class was a semester-long self-directed project to measure and analyze something of personal interest.

For this project, I decided to combine my love of soccer with a desire to learn MATLAB. Given my level of experience with MATLAB at the time (none), that was a pretty ambitious decision. However, I managed to complete the project with results that were consistent with existing academic literature on juggling, and to this day this is one of the projects that I am most proud of. 

Highlights of the project: 

• Experimentally found the conditions required to achieve passive stability in soccer juggling, where small disturbances are eliminated without requiring a conscious reaction from the player. 
• Experimented with using the MATLAB Image Acquisition Toolbox to read 3D Microsoft Kinect skeleton coordinates and extract limb kinematics to calculate juggling variables in real time. 
• Wrote a slow motion video analysis script in MATLAB that used image analysis to located frame-by-frame coordinates and angles of markers taped to a person’s joints as they juggled a soccer ball. 
• Used those coordinates to determine optimal phase lag and foot acceleration on impact required for passive juggling stability.

Ong SoccerPassiveStability by Jess Ong on Scribd