Runway Ready?

If you walk with a wobble
If you've got a catwalk stride
iOS data collection app interface

Inspiration

From fashion shows to strutting down downtown Waterloo, you are the main character… Unless… your walk is less of a confident strut but more a hobble .

I’ve always wanted to know if my walking/running form is bad, and Runway Ready is here to tell me just that.

What it does

Your phone is the hardware. By leveraging the built in accelerometer within our mobile devices, we’ve built an app that sends the accelerometer data in x,y, and z directions collected from our phones to our server, which then analyzes the accelerometer patterns to deduce whether your walk is either a ‘strut’ or a ‘limp’ without any additional hardware other than the phone in your pocket!

How we built it

We used Swift to build the simple mobile app that gathers and transmits the accelerometer data to our server. The server, powered by Node.js, collects, processes, and analyzes the data in real time using JavaScript. Finally, the website used to display the results is built on Express.

Challenges we ran into

Signal processing was a huge challenge. A seemingly easy task of differentiating between a good or bad walk is not straightforward. After hours of graphing and signal analysis, we created an algorithm that can separate the two.

Connecting the data sent from the mobile app to integrating the data into our backend signal processing took way too much time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

After hours of rigorous data collection and graphical and algebraic signal analysis, we finally came up with a simple algorithm that works with basically zero previous signal processing knowledge!

What we learned

While we've used languages such as Swift and Javascript separately, this project was a chance for us to combine all our knowledge and skills in these software tools to create something with potential to be expanded across various fields.

What's next for Runway Ready?

It’s a silly idea; we know. But it actually sparked from our hatred of the piercing pain of shin splints that occurs on long runs. Shin splints are partially caused due to improper running form, which Runway Ready could be used to fix. Runway Ready has a diverse range of applications including sport performance, physiotherapy, injury/surgery recovery, and of course, making you an everyday runway supermodels.

Given a bit more time, we could collect more data, and employ ML to make a more robust algorithm that can detect even the most subtle issues in walking/running form.