Digital Fitness Connector: Smart Wearable System

Nisheeth Gupta, Senior Member, IEEE Verizon CTO

Irving, TX USA e-mail: Nisheeth.gupta@verizon.com

Sruti Jilla Irving, TX USA

e-mail: jsruti@gmail.com

Abstract—Sports and fitness are increasingly getting attention of companies and researchers around the world. In particular, recent mobile devices with hardware GPS and accelerometers, has made possible variety of sports and fitness applications that were not possible earlier. This paper investigates trends in fitness devices, proposes new fitness device system architecture. Proposed Digital Fitness Connector (DFC) architecture leverages existing technologies of smartphone and sports & fitness devices. This allows compatibility with over 80 ANT+ health and fitness sensors to track heart rate, speed, cadence, distance, pace, power (watts), and more. DFC works with majority of smartphone platforms - iPhone, Android, Windows. It allows users to monitor physical activity either in real-time or post workout. Moreover, DFC gives user flexibility to carry smartphone only if they wish to monitor physical activity real-time, otherwise user can just carry DFC to capture and store data from health and fitness sensors. To the best of our knowledge, our project is the first to make a digital fitness connector that works with variety of smartphone platforms and at same time is compatible with major health and fitness sensors.

Keywords-Fitness;Healt;, ANT+; Smartphone; Accelerometer; Heart Rate Monitor

I. INTRODUCTION

It has been scientifically proven that people of all ages and conditions that regularly practice physical activity and sports benefit from a wide range of physical, social and mental health benefits. Fitness increases productivity, interacts positively with diet, enhances functional capacity, promotes social interaction, and reduces health care costs.

Companies and researchers worldwide are devoting an increasing attention to sports, fitness and physical activities. The developed products fall in three categories:

• Computer-supported physical games [1, 2, 3] • Virtual trainers [4, 5, 6] • Mobile applications and devices for physical activities

[7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20] The third category is very promising because it could

allow users to be assisted anytime, anywhere. However, the

user interfaces of current commercial products are extremely limited.

To overcome their limitations and help users choose fitness and health devices of their choice while performing fitness exercises, this paper proposes DFC, a digital fitness connector that is compatible with 80 ANT+ health and fitness sensors and also works with major smartphone platforms.

This paper is organized as follows. Section II surveys related work on computer-supported physical games, virtual trainers, and mobile applications and devices for physical activities. Proposed DFC solution and its architecture are discussed in Section III. Comparison of DFC with other platforms is carried out in Section IV.

II. RELATED WORK

A. Computer-supported physical games

Chi et al. [16] have provided a state of the art of pervasive computing in sport technologies, with the aim to encourage new research in this emerging area and to describe how technology can be applied to sports. They identify three areas of application - athletic performance, entertainment and support for referees - pointing out some research lines for each, such as studying which sensors are more appropriate to monitor the performance of di erent kinds of athletes and studying the use of games and special equipment to encourage users to exercise harder.

An example of a game that encourages users to exercise harder is Shadow Boxer [2]. Another user evaluation that shows the e ectiveness of adopting a game-style to encourage physical activity was carried out by H”am”al”ainen et al. [1]. Jeong et al. [3] concentrated instead on the use of force and touch feedback in a system which combines an immersive virtual environment with a human-scale haptic interface.

B. Virtual Trainers

Although the general benefits of embodied agents in user interfaces have been already described several years ago [17, 18, 19], their use as virtual trainers is still scarcely explored. A pioneering evaluation of a 2D trainer for fitness

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purposes can be found in [4], where the Philips Virtual Coach system is used to motivate the user while she cycles on a stationary home exercise bike.

Embodied virtual trainers are used also in commercial applications for PCs and gaming consoles. For example, yourself! Fitness [5] includes a 3D virtual trainer that can suggest the user a set of exercises varying upon user’s focus (weight loss, cardio, body strength). The trainer can also show how to perform an exercise correctly and motivate the user in following the fitness program.

On the contrary, EyeToy: Kinetic [6], a fitness application for PlayStation 2, detects user’s movements through the EyeToy camera, a cheap device similar to a webcam. The application lets the user choose a personal trainer that creates for her a specific 12-week plan, taking into account user’s height, weight, age, familiarity with EyeToy games and physical condition (thanks to a short questionnaire).

C. Mobile Applications and Devices for Physical Activities

All the solutions described in the previous sections are meant for indoor use. Therefore, they prevent the user from getting the benefits of open-air physical activity, such as jogging in natural environments. To help people in open-air physical activities, some researchers [7, 21, 22] and companies [8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 23, 24] proposed mobile solutions. Fig. 1 shows our perspective on classification of such mobile applications and devics for physical activities.

Fig. 1. Mobile Applications and Devices for physical activites

Health and Fitness devices from Garmin [11], Suunto [13], Fitbit [25] are considered as stand alone in the sense that these devices capture real-time data in Flash memory inside device itself. Advantage of standalone fitness solution is that sensors are easy to wear and captured data is very accurate. To export data from Garmin, Suunto or Fitbit to PC/MAC, user has to install necessary software drivers on PC/MAC and needs to attach USB dongle through which data is sent wired/wirelessly. Disadvantage of standalone health and fitness solution is that it does not allow user to access or visualize data captured during length of physical activity or comparison with previous days historical data. Another disadvantage of standalone devices is that it is not

easy to share physical activity performance with friends and family and involves multiple steps.

Hundreds of applications are available on Android, iOS application marketplace for health & fitness. These applications make use of device’s GPS or accelerometer or both to sense users motion. Some of the well-known applications are iTreadMill [26], RunKeeper [27], Endomondo [28]. These applications are smart enough to allow keep track of jogging/biking route, workout data, comprehensive workout history, select and control music during physical activity, geo-tag photos along your routes, and share performance metrics with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, and email. Following are disadvantages of smartphone application based fitness solution: 1) Smartphone applications utilizes on-board sensors and hence cannot interface with heart rate monitor or cadence meter for bikes 2) data collected using accelerometer is inaccurate compared to pedometer mounted on foot such as Garmin Foot Pod 3) Not every user is comfortable with mounting smartphone on arm as it may get damaged in gym or outdoor activities.

Fig. 2. Shipment of Fitness Devices by Region (2010-14)

To take advantage of accuracy of external mounted

sensors and smartphone features, hybrid solution such as Nike+ [15], Digifit [23], Adidas MiCoach [24] are quickly gaining customer attention and market share. Fig. 2 shows hybrid solutions shipment by region. Hybrid solution from Nike+ works only with selected iPod, iPhone, and iTouch and makes use of Nordic VLSI nRF2401+ chip for communication [29]. Adidas MiCoach can be interfaced with Apple devices using a dongle. Digifit also provide iPhone/iTouch dongle to capture data from ANT+ powered fitness devices. To make use of Nike+, Digifit, MiCoach, user has to start specific application on their device. Disadvantage of hybrid solutions is that user always has to carry smartphone to capture data, and not every user is comfortable with mounting smartphone on arm as it may get damaged in gym or outdoor activities. Also, these hybrid solutions do not work with Android or Windows smartphone.

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III. OUR PROPOSAL: DIGITAL FITNESS CONNECTOR

(DFC)

Our proposal is Digital Fitness Connector. It overcomes disadvantages mentioned in section II of standalone, smartphone and hybrid solution:

Allow users to pick up from 80 ANT+ health and fitness sensors to track heart rate, speed, cadence, distance, pace, power (watts), and more

Give users freedom to choose smartphone device of their choice for capturing, visualizing, and sharing data

Allow user to mount smartphone only if they wish to hear music or get real-time performance feedback

Allow user to wear DFC as a fashion accessory

Fig. 3. Digital Fitness Connector System Architecture

System architecture of DFC is shown in Fig. 3. It captures

data stream with health and fitness sensors and store it on-board memory if it is not paired with PC or smartphone and later offloads data to selected device. If user wishes to mount smartphone using armband and wants to track performance metrics real-time, then DFC only acts as buffer for programmed time and sends data to smartphone at specified time intervals.

Fig. 4. DFC Schematic

Fig. 4. shows high level schematic of DFC prototype. We used 3D accelerometer on-board so that DFC can be used as pedometer during times when footpod is not appropriate, example formal shoes during office hours. We envision DFC to have a form factor of Fitbit [25], but of course, with much more capabilities.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION

Fig. 5. Prototype of DFC paired with Android Smartphone

We prototyped DFC based on architecture showed in Fig.

4. To realize this prototype, we used Arduino Pro mini 328 – 3.3V/8MHz, transreceiver nRF24AP1, Bluetooth Modem – BlueSMIRF Gold, and 20mAh polymer lithium ion battery all tucked in nicely in a soap-box (56x31x24 mm). Our prototype is shown in Fig. 5. As it can be seen in fig. 5., we have attached a belt clip to prototype to make it easy to mount on clothing. We used Android G1 Smartphone, Garmin FootPod and Suunto Heart Rate Monitor for our tests.

Tests in which we did not pair DFC with smartphone, DFC was able to capture & store data, which was later streamed to Android G1. As storing heart rate data of every second does not make sense, we created logic in DFC to program intervals between capturing data from heart rate sensor.

Tests in which we arm mounted smartphone and paired with DFC, we used audio overlay on music to listen to performance metrics relayed wirelessly from DFC. We added feature in our android application to program certain parameters of DFC such as time intervals between streaming data to smartphone, turn on/off Bluetooth and automatic pairing with smartphone to conserve battery, time interval between two readings of heart rate monitor.

Test cases in which no health and fitness sensor was paired with DFC, we successfully tested DFC as a pedometer.

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

This paper investigated a fitness connector (called DFC) to capture, store, and stream data from health and fitness sensors to smartphone. At present, DFC has been tested with Garmin and Sunnto sensors. To the best of our knowledge, DFC is the first fitness connector that can act as

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pedometer and also as a hub for variety of third party fitness sensors.

We evaluated the e ectiveness and ease of DFC in various scenarios to allow users to capture, store and stream data from health and fitness sensors. We analyzed sensor data logs, questionnaires and videos of users’ performance, which showed that DFC has potential to create a new market.

Our research will proceed in several directions. First, we will try di erent kinds of health and fitness sensors. Second, we will investigate and evaluate scenarios were multiple accelerometer based body mounted sensor can be used to capture body motions that cannot be captured with a pedometer such as push ups, pull ups, bench press, arm curls etc. Third, we will involve a professional design firm to create blue print for production version of DFC. Fourth, we will consider a cloud based data storage to which user can push their health and fitness data and access from variety of access points. Finally, we will consider mobile information visualization aspects to design graphical presentations of users’ performance data.

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