Researchers UCBM monitor the challenge of the amputee swimmer
12 April 2016 - Salvatore Cimmino, fifty-two year old transfemoral amputee, will swim from Cuba to Key West Island in Florida. Alongside him, the researchers ofUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, who follow in particular his physical preparation. The crossing, scheduled for September, would constitute a real record: 180 kilometers in 60 hours without interruption. The greatest challenge for someone like Cimmino, who has already run, for example, the 54 kilometers of the New York Swimming Marathon. Always with the same objective: to raise public awareness on the issue of disability.
Meanwhile, the protagonist of the future enterprise is in Miami, where he is training with the help of the team UCBM and companies (St Microeletronics, Cisco and two spin-off companies fromUCBM, Ican Robotics and Jumpo) which, in addition to providing support biomedical technologies and tools, are monitoring motor performance and vital parameters during preparation. The study is carried out through magneto-inertial sensors placed behind the goggles to return information on the distance travelled, the frequency of the strokes, the respiratory frequency, as well as the efficiency of the stroke. A heart rate monitor built into a special chest strap for heart rate monitoring is also used, as are other sophisticated systems. All with a dual function: to help Salvatore Cimmino to improve his own pace and to carry out a comparative analysis of the performance data carried out in extreme conditions.
“Given the exceptional nature of Salvatore Cimmino's challenge – underlined the Vice Rector for Research Eugenio Guglielmelli - which will take him to the limits of human performance in terms of resistance to fatigue and unique environmental conditions, we have taken action, together with the Olympic Center of CONI, directed by Armando Spataro, to make technologies available to him that help him stay safe while supporting the eight months of very tough training programs, as well as for the actual crossing."
The culmination of the enterprise, the crossing will in fact be monitored by researchers from the Bioengineering Laboratory of theUCBM, involved in a working group together with the Istituto Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa and some American universities. The idea is to create a real-time streaming of data relating to Cimmino's physical state, taking advantage of the radio-satellite connection available thanks to the presence of boats that will accompany the swimmer. The vehicles that will "escort" it will in fact guarantee, in addition to the integration of nutrients and the possible replacement of malfunctioning sensors,
also the collection of data to be analyzed in the laboratory at the end of the test. A study that will therefore continue even beyond the finish line.
