Abstract
Activity monitoring (AM) is an established technique for the assessment of a person's physical activity. With the rapid rise of smartwatch technology, this platform presents an interesting opportunity to use a device for AM that has both the ability to monitor activity and also the ability to interface seamlessly with other healthcare systems. There are questions however around the suitability of smartwatches as monitoring devices. This paper presents a validation of one smartwatch, the ZGPAX S8, for use as an activity monitor. Two experiments are presented: a physical manipulation test and a co-location test. In the physical manipulation test, three S8s are compared to a reference accelerometer under human physical manipulation. In the co-location test, the smartwatch is used alongside a reference device for a period of three hours by four participants to assess both the accelerometer data and the results of processing on data from both devices. Findings from these experiments show that the S8 accelerometer has a good correlation and limits of agreement in the physical manipulation test (r2 ∼ 0.95, CR ∼ 2.5 m/s 2), and excellent correlation and limits of agreement in the analysis of processed data from the co-location experiment (r2 ∼ 0.99, CR ∼ 0.23). From these results, the S8 is evaluated to be a suitable device for AM. Some specific limitations in the S8 are identified such as data range clipping, time drift and sample rate consistency, but these are not found to impact on the suitability of the device once algorithmic processing is applied to the data.
Highlights
A CTIVITY monitoring (AM) is an established technique for the objective, quantitative assessment of the amount of physical activity (PA) undertaken by a person over time
This paper firstly examines the smartwatch accelerometer as an accelerometer in and of itself and the ability of the smartwatch to detect motion compared with a reference accelerometer
A physical manipulation experiment to test the mechanical ability of the S8 to detect acceleration compared to a reference and secondly, a co-location experiment where the S8 and a reference device (RD) were worn by participants for three hours to test the S8 against an RD under realistic conditions and provide data on which to test algorithmic output
Summary
A CTIVITY monitoring (AM) is an established technique for the objective, quantitative assessment of the amount of physical activity (PA) undertaken by a person over time. AM has been used in a number of fields such as obesity [1], COPD [2] and mental health [3] and is often used instead of, or alongside traditional questionnaire or interview based methods to reduce the inaccuracies, such as recall bias, inherent in these qualitative techniques [4], [5]. AM is well suited to longitudinal applications outside of the laboratory, where an assessment of a Manuscript received October 3, 2016; revised May 11, 2017 and June 29, 2017; accepted July 21, 2017. Date of publication October 22, 2017; date of current version June 29, 2018. The data that support this work are available in IEEE Xplore alongside the paper. The data that support this work are available in IEEE Xplore alongside the paper. (Corresponding author: James David Amor.)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
