Towards Personalized Fitness with Multi-modal Wearable Heart Rate Monitors: A Proposal

Nowadays, the trend for home workouts is getting more and more popular. The growth of wearable fitness trackers from basic accelerometers, pedometers, pulse detectors, and ECGs also supports the advancement of personal fitness monitoring. Everyone has a distinct level of fitness, in theory. The heart rate, which is correlated with physical activity, such as sports, demonstrates how this organ functions. As the muscles work harder at a high intensity, the heart rate will also rise. This paper presents the design and implementation of a multimodal wearable heart rate monitoring system. The software is Android-based and is designed to be able to receive heart rate data sent by two different wearable heart rate monitors simultaneously using Bluetooth low-energy protocol. One uses an optical heart monitor and the other uses an electrocardiogram or ECG. The implementation also includes IoT for real-time data acquisition and a web-based application for wider accessibility. The system is evaluated by collecting packets from two devices for 60 minutes. The results underscore the feasibility of the system in collecting users’ heart rate data either using different devices. Furthermore, it serves as a foundation for future studies aiming to expand the personalization capabilities of wearable devices in healthcare and fitness.