Designing and implementation of IMU-based wearable real-time jump meter for vertical jump height measurement

The vertical jump height has been widely used in sports-related studies to track athletes’ development. Although many systems can measure vertical jump height, there are still problems with measuring it in real-time during sports activity. Therefore, the use of inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based systems in this area is increasing. In this study, a low-cost, small, wireless, and wearable jump meter has been designed to address the real-time measurement problem. The developed system has a high accuracy for vertical jump measurements and provides some extra parameters for performance evaluation. Fourteen volleyball players’ measurements were taken simultaneously with the designed system and a jump mat to evaluate the developed system’s performance (n = 350). The obtained results show that the system is highly correlated with jump mat (r² = 0.92), and it also has a mean bias of −0.06 cm (95% limits of agreement −3.4 cm to 3.3 cm; p < 0.001).