Real-time biomechanical feedback (BMF) is a relatively new area of research. The potential of using advanced technology to improve motion skills in sport and accelerate physical rehabilitation has been demonstrated in a number of studies. This paper provides a literature review of BMF systems in sports and rehabilitation. Our motivation was to examine the history of the field to capture its evolution over time, particularly how technologies are used and implemented in BMF systems, and to identify the most recent studies showing novel solutions and remarkable implementations. We searched for papers in three research databases: Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed. The initial search yielded 1167 unique papers. After a rigorous and challenging exclusion process, 144 papers were eventually included in this report. We focused on papers describing applications and systems that implement a complete real-time feedback loop, which must include the use of sensors, real-time processing, and concurrent feedback. A number of research questions were raised, and the papers were studied and evaluated accordingly. We identified different types of physical activities, sensors, modalities, actuators, communications, settings and end users. A subset of the included papers, showing the most perspectives, was reviewed in depth to highlight and present their innovative research approaches and techniques. Real-time BMF has great potential in many areas. In recent years, sensors have been the main focus of these studies, but new types of processing devices, methods, and algorithms, actuators, and communication technologies and protocols will be explored in more depth in the future. This paper presents a broad insight into the field of BMF.
Keywords: actuator; application; biomechanical feedback; concurrent; instant; modality; motion; real-time; rehabilitation; sensor; sport; system.