Study of Badminton Footwork Dynamics and Athletic Load Quantification Based on a Dense Microseismic Geophone Array

Conventional approaches for badminton biomechanics assessment, such as optical motion capture, force plates, and wearable inertial sensors, are limited by occlusion, restricted coverage, or intrusiveness during high-intensity on-court movement. To address these limitations, this proof-of-concept study introduced microseismic monitoring for non-contact, full-court footwork analysis. A high-density edge-surrounding array of 20 Sercel DSU3 three-component MEMS digital geophones was deployed around a standard badminton court. Continuous vibration data were collected from three elite male badminton players during a 6-min high-intensity multi-ball defensive training protocol. Signal processing combined 10–150 Hz band-pass filtering, two-stage STA/LTA-AIC arrival picking, and a time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) localization algorithm to detect and reconstruct footstep events. The proposed system achieved an overall localization mean absolute error of 31.4 ± 12.6 cm, with the spatial error distribution consistent with geometric dilution of precision. In addition, the distribution of footstep microseismic energy showed a strong GutenbergRichter-type scaling relationship (R2 > 0.98, b ≈ 1.25). A Pareto-like pattern was also observed, with the most intense 20% of events accounting for approximately 61% of the total vibration-based load index. These findings support the feasibility of dense microseismic sensing as a non-invasive framework for full-court badminton footwork monitoring and exploratory athletic-load quantification. Given the pilot nature of this study, larger-scale validation with direct kinetic measurements and longitudinal designs is still required before practical application in fatigue assessment or injury-risk modeling.