My Personal Trainer - An iPhone Application for Exercise Monitoring and Analysis

Greeff, C.R., Yang, J., MacDonald, B. and Wunsche, B.C.

The obesity epidemic facing the Western world has been a topic of numerous discussions and research projects. One major issue preventing people from becoming more active and following health care recommendations is an increasingly busy life style and the lack of motivation, training, and available supervision. While the use of personal trainers increases in popularity, they are often expensive and must be scheduled in advance. In this research we developed a smartphone application, which assists users with learning and monitoring exercises. A key feature of the application is a novel algorithm for analysing accelerometer data and automatically counting repetitive exercises. This allows users to perform exercises anywhere and anytime, while doing other activities at the same time. The recording of exercise data allows users to track their performance, monitor improvements, and compare it with their goals and the performance of other users, which increases motivation. A usability study and feedback from a public exhibition indicates that users like the concept and find it helpful for supporting their exercise regime. The counting algorithm has an acceptable accuracy for many application scenarios, but has limitations with regard to complex exercises, small number of repetitions, and poorly performed exercises.

Cite as: Greeff, C.R., Yang, J., MacDonald, B. and Wunsche, B.C. (2013). My Personal Trainer - An iPhone Application for Exercise Monitoring and Analysis. In Proc. User Interfaces 2013 (AUIC 2013) Melbourne, Australia. CRPIT, 139. Smith, R.T. and Wunsche, B.C. Eds., ACS. 127-128

(from crpit.com) (local if available)