Phone in the Pocket: Pervasive Self-Tracking of Physical Activity Levels

Mobile (smart)phones prevail in our daily life activities, and in our research we aim for it to provide pervasive services for wellness. Therefore, we assess the phone’s feasibility to unobtrusively, continuously and in real-time track its user’s physical activity and the resulting energy expenditure (EE). Activity Level Estimator (ALE) is an Android OS application developed for that purpose. We have assessed the accuracy of ALE against the BodyMedia SenseWear (SW) device and the gold standard for EE estimation, i.e., an indirect calorimetry (IC) method. ALE has mean accuracy of 86% (vs. SW) to 93% (vs. IC) for walking, and in 24h it underestimates EE by 23% ALE is currently used for a long-term behavioral trends study with the University of Geneva students and faculty.