Physical activity has a positive impact on people's well-being, and it may also decrease the occurrence of chronic diseases. Activity recognition with wearable sensors can provide feedback to the user about his/her lifestyle regarding physical activity and sports, and thus, promote a more active lifestyle. So far, activity recognition has mostly been studied in supervised laboratory settings. The aim of this study was to examine how well the daily activities and sports performed by the subjects in unsupervised settings can be recognized compared to supervised settings. The activities were recognized by using a hybrid classifier combining a tree structure containing a priori knowledge and artificial neural networks, and also by using three reference classifiers. Activity data were collected for 68 h from 12 subjects, out of which the activity was supervised for 21 h and unsupervised for 47 h. Activities were recognized based on signal features from 3-D accelerometers on hip and wrist and GPS information. The activities included lying down, sitting and standing, walking, running, cycling with an exercise bike, rowing with a rowing machine, playing football, Nordic walking, and cycling with a regular bike. The total accuracy of the activity recognition using both supervised and unsupervised data was 89% that was only 1% unit lower than the accuracy of activity recognition using only supervised data. However, the accuracy decreased by 17% unit when only supervised data were used for training and only unsupervised data for validation, which emphasizes the need for out-of-laboratory data in the development of activity-recognition systems. The results support a vision of recognizing a wider spectrum, and more complex activities in real life settings.

Automatic classification of everyday activities can be used for promotion of health-enhancing physical activities and a healthier lifestyle. In this paper, methods used for classification of everyday activities like walking, running, and cycling are described. The aim of the study was to find out how to recognize activities, which sensors are useful and what kind of signal processing and classification is required. A large and realistic data library of sensor data was collected. Sixteen test persons took part in the data collection, resulting in approximately 31 h of annotated, 35-channel data recorded in an everyday environment. The test persons carried a set of wearable sensors while performing several activities during the 2-h measurement session. Classification results of three classifiers are shown: custom decision tree, automatically generated decision tree, and artificial neural network. The classification accuracies using leave-one-subject-out cross validation range from 58 to 97% for custom decision tree classifier, from 56 to 97% for automatically generated decision tree, and from 22 to 96% for artificial neural network. Total classification accuracy is 82 % for custom decision tree classifier, 86% for automatically generated decision tree, and 82% for artificial neural network.

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The prevalence of lifestyle-related health problems is increasing rapidly. Many of the diseases and health risks could be prevented or alleviated by making changes toward healthier lifestyles. We have developed the Wellness Diary (WD), a concept for personal and mobile wellness management based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Two implementations of the concept were made for the Symbian Series 60 (S60) mobile phone platform, and their usability, usage, and acceptance were studied in two 3-month user studies. Study I was related to weight management and study II to general wellness management. In both the studies, the concept and its implementations were well accepted and considered as easy to use and useful in wellness management. The usage rate of the WD was high and sustained at a high level throughout the study. The average number of entries made per day was 5.32 (SD = 2.59, range = 0-14) in study I, and 5.48 (SD = 2.60, range = 0-17) in study II. The results indicate that the WD is well suited for supporting CBT-based wellness management.

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