PHYSICAL ACTIVITY MONITORING AND INTERVENTION USING SMARTPHONE AND MOBILE APP

• US 20130190008A1
• Filed: 01/17/2013
• Published: 07/25/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/19/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: University of Southern California
• Original Assignee: University of Southern California
• Inventors: Vathsangam, Harshvardhan, Sukhatme, Gaurav S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,965,402 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1694 the I/O peripheral being a single or a set of motion sensors for pointer control or gesture input obtained by sensing movements of the portable computer
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2218/08 Feature extraction
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/25 Recognition of walking or running movements, e.g. gait recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/30 relating to physical therapies or activities, e.g. physiotherapy, acupressure or exercising
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/12 including a sensor for measuring a physical value, e.g. temperature or motion telephones including GPS signal receivers H04M2250/10
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services

Abstract

A mobile software application may issue an alert when a user is not achieving a heath objective based on track movement of a mobile computer system that is running the application and being carried by the user and physical characteristics of the user. The software application may map information about the physical characteristics of the user to a user model and determine the energy being expended by the user based on the user model and movement information provided by the mobile computer system. The software application may determine the frequency of steps taken by the user by: bandpass filtering a time domain signal that is representative of the movement, transforming the filtered time domain signal into a frequency domain signal, and equating the step frequency with the frequency of the highest peak in the frequency domain signal.

Claims

1. Non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage media containing a program of instructions configured to cause a mobile computer system that includes a movement detection system that does not rely on GPS signals when running the program of instructions to:

receive information about physical characteristics of a user that carries the mobile computer system;

track movement of the mobile computer system while being carried by the user based on movement information provided by the movement detection system;

determine whether the user is achieving a heath objective based on the tracked movement and the physical characteristics of the user; and

issue an alert to the user if the user is determined not to be achieving the heath objective.

2. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the movement detection system includes an accelerometer and the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to track movement of the mobile computer system based on movement information from the accelerometer.

3. The storage media of claim 2 wherein the movement detection system includes a gyroscope and the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to track movement of the mobile computer system based on movement information from the gyroscope.

4. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to issue an alert to a person other than the user if the user is determined not to be achieving the heath objective by communicating the alert over a computer network system to the person.

5. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to receive an alert from a computer network system that a person other than the user has been determined not to be achieving a health object.

6. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to provide information to the user indicative of the degree to which the user is achieving the health objective based on the tracked movement and the physical characteristics of the user.

7. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to provide information to a person other than the user indicative of the degree to which the user is achieving the health objective based on the tracked movement and the physical characteristics of the user by communicating the information over a computer network system to the person.

8. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to receive information from a computer network indicative of the degree to which a person other than the user is achieving a health objective.

9. The storage media of claim 8 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to receive information from a computer network indicative of the degree to which multiple persons other than the user are each achieving a health objective and to compute a group score indicative of the degree to which the multiple persons and the user are collectively achieving their respective health objectives.

10. The storage media of claim 9 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system when running the program of instructions to participate in a contest and to utilize the group score as a factor that affects the ability of the user to prevail in that contest.

11. The storage media of claim 1 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system to run the program of instructions to perform the steps of claim 1, except for the alert step, in the background while other programs of instructions are running in the mobile computer system.

12. Non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage media containing a program of instructions configured to cause a mobile computer system that generates a time domain signal that is indicative of steps that a user is taking while carrying the mobile computer system and while running the program of instructions to determine the frequency of those steps by:

filtering the time domain signal so as to substantially attenuate frequencies that are lower than 0.5 Hz and higher than 10 Hz;

transforming the filtered time domain signal into a frequency domain signal;

equating the step frequency with the frequency of the highest peak in the frequency domain signal; and

communicating the equated step frequency.

13. The media of claim 12 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system while running the program of instructions to transform the filtered time domain signal into a frequency domain signal using a fast Fourier transform.

14. The media of claim 12 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system while running the program of instructions to determine whether the user is walking or running by:

filtering a low range of the time domain signal so as to substantially attenuate frequencies that are lower than 0.5 Hz and higher than 2.5 Hz;

filtering a high range of the time domain signal so as to substantially attenuate frequencies that are lower than 2.5 Hz and higher than 10 Hz;

transforming the low range filtered time domain signal into a low frequency domain signal using a fast Fourier transform (FFT);

transforming the high range filtered time domain signal into a high frequency domain signal using a fast Fourier transform (FFT);

determining that the user is walking if the low frequency domain signal has a peak signal that is larger than any peak signal in the high frequency domain signal;

determining that the user is running if the high frequency domain signal has a peak signal that is larger than any peak signal in the low frequency domain signal; and

communicating whether the user has been determined to be walking or running.

15. The media of claim 12 wherein the time domain signal is a composite of:

a first time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a first direction;

a second time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a second direction that is orthogonal to the first direction; and

a third time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a third direction that is orthogonal to the first and the second direction.

16. The media of claim 12 wherein the time domain signal is the signal that has the highest peak level among the following signals, as compared to the highest level peak of the other signals:

a first time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a first direction;

a second time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a second direction that is orthogonal to the first direction; and

a third time domain signal that is representative of movement of the mobile computer system in a third direction that is orthogonal to the first and the second direction.

17. The media of claim 12 wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system while running the program of instructions to communicate that the user is not taking steps if the highest peak in the frequency domain signal is not substantially higher than the other peaks in the frequency domain signal.

18. The media of claim 12 wherein the time domain signal is representative of only vertical movement of the mobile computer system and wherein the program of instructions is configured to cause the mobile computer system while running the program of instructions to determine the time domain signal based on information from the mobile computer system that is indicative of its orientation.

19. Non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable storage media containing a program of instructions configured to cause a mobile computer system that includes a movement detection system that does not rely on GPS signals when running the program of instructions to determine energy being expended by a user while carrying the mobile computer system by:

receiving information about physical characteristics of a user that carries the mobile computer system;

mapping the information about the physical characteristics of the user to a user model;

determining the energy being expended by the user while carrying the mobile computer system based on the user model and movement information provided by the movement detection system that is indicative of movement of the user while carrying the mobile computer system.

20. The media of claim 19 wherein the movement information provided by the movement detection system includes the frequency of the steps.

21. The media of claim 20 wherein the movement information provided by the movement detection system includes the amplitude of the steps.