Athlete monitoring is a major field of interest for professional and recreational runners as well as for coaches to improve performance and reduce injury risk. The development of inertial sensors in recent years offers the opportunity to improve the number of monitored training sessions significantly. This research used a self-developed inertial sensor in conjunction with a motion tracking system and four smart bands to record the runner’s movement and extract parameters such as step numbers and frequencies. The data recorded were calibrated before it was high-pass filtered to remove gravity components from the signal. A peak detection algorithm was developed to find the number of steps, which have been further used to compare the different systems (IMU, motion capture, smart bands) and find their agreement. The results showed a very strong correlation between the IMU and the motion tracking system of r² = 0.998, and an r² = 0.996 between the IMU and one smart band.

This research utilizes a self-developed inertial sensor in conjunction with a motion tracking system and four Smart Bands to record a runner’s movements and extract parameters such as step numbers, length, and frequencies at different running speeds. The data obtained were processed to find the number of steps taken. These steps were also recorded by an IMU (inertial measurement unit) and motion tracking system (MoCap—Motion Capturing) and used to compare the different systems and find their agreement at different running speeds. The results show a very strong correlation between the IMU and the motion tracking system with r² = 0.968 at 6 km/h, r² = 0.991 at 8 km/h, r² = 0.991 at 10 km/h, and r² = 0.996 at 12 km/h. The Xiaomi Mi Band 2 showed an r² = 0.861 at 6 km/h, r² = 0.985 at 8 km/h, r² = 0.977 at 10 km/h, and r² = 0.987 at 12 km/h and can therefore be considered a good replacement for an IMU.