Predicting lying, sitting and walking at different intensities using smartphone accelerometers at three different wear locations: hands, pant pockets, backpack.

Objective: This study uses machine learning (ML) to develop methods for estimating activity type/intensity using smartphones, to evaluate the accuracy of these models for classifying activity, and to evaluate differences in accuracy between three different wear locations. Method: Forty-eight participants were recruited to complete a series of activities while carrying Samsung phones in three different locations: backpack, right hand and right pocket. They were asked to sit, lie down, walk and run three Metabolic Equivalent Task (METs), five METs and at seven METs. Raw accelerometer data were collected. We used the R, activity counts package, to calculate activity counts and generated new features based on the raw accelerometer data. We evaluated and compared several ML algorithms; Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, Decision Tree, Linear Discriminant Analysis and k-Nearest Neighbours using the caret package (V.6.0-86). Using the combination of the raw accelerometer data and the computed features leads to high model accuracy. Results: Using raw accelerometer data, RF models achieved an accuracy of 92.90% for the right pocket location, 89% for the right hand location and 90.8% for the backpack location. Using activity counts, RF models achieved an accuracy of 51.4% for the right pocket location, 48.5% for the right hand location and 52.1% for the backpack location. Conclusion: Our results suggest that using smartphones to measure physical activity is accurate for estimating activity type/intensity and ML methods, such as RF with feature engineering techniques can accurately classify physical activity intensity levels in laboratory settings.

Predicting lying, sitting, walking and running using Apple Watch and Fitbit data.

OBJECTIVES: This study's objective was to examine whether commercial wearable devices could accurately predict lying, sitting and varying intensities of walking and running. METHODS: We recruited a convenience sample of 49 participants (23 men and 26 women) to wear three devices, an Apple Watch Series 2, a Fitbit Charge HR2 and iPhone 6S. Participants completed a 65 min protocol consisting of 40 min of total treadmill time and 25 min of sitting or lying time. The study's outcome variables were six movement types: lying, sitting, walking self-paced and walking/running at 3 metabolic equivalents of task (METs), 5 METs and 7 METs. All analyses were conducted at the minute level with heart rate, steps, distance and calories from Apple Watch and Fitbit. These included three different machine learning models: support vector machines, Random Forest and Rotation forest. RESULTS: Our dataset included 3656 and 2608 min of Apple Watch and Fitbit data, respectively. Rotation Forest models had the highest classification accuracies for Apple Watch at 82.6%, and Random Forest models had the highest accuracy for Fitbit at 90.8%. Classification accuracies for Apple Watch data ranged from 72.6% for sitting to 89.0% for 7 METs. For Fitbit, accuracies varied between 86.2% for sitting to 92.6% for 7 METs. CONCLUSION: This preliminary study demonstrated that data from commercial wearable devices could predict movement types with reasonable accuracy. More research is needed, but these methods are a proof of concept for movement type classification at the population level using commercial wearable device data.