A Multipurpose Wearable Sensor-Based System for Weight Training

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing interest in automated tracking and detection of sports activities. Researchers have shown that providing activity information to individuals during their exercise routines can greatly help them in achieving their exercise goals. In particular, such information would help them to maximize workout efficiency and prevent overreaching and overtraining. This paper presents the development of a novel multipurpose wearable device for automatic weight detection, activity type recognition, and count repetition in sports activities such as weight training. The device monitors weights and activities by using an inertial measurement unit (IMU), an accelerometer, and three force sensors mounted in a glove, and classifies them by utilizing developed machine learning models. For weight detection purposes, different classifiers including Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Multi-layer Perceptron Neural Networks (MLP) were investigated. For activity recognition, the K nearest neighbor (KNN), Decision Tree (DT), Random Forest (RF), and SVM models were trained and examined. Experimental results indicate that the SVM classifier can achieve the highest accuracy for weight detection whereas RF can outperform other classifiers for activity recognition. The results indicate feasibility of developing a wearable device that can provide in-situ accurate information regarding the lifted weight and activity type with minimum physical intervention.