Researchers aim to develop cost-effective, accurate system to get everyday people to be more active. This technology is a behavioral monitoring and analytics platform that uses the sensors on a smartphone to detect, characterize and quantify human movement irrespective of where the sensor is placed on a person. The team uses just-in-time nudging and "big-data" similarity metrics to induce behavioral changes and entice people to be more active. The mission of this project is to create a cellphone-based service to measure and aggregate parameters of personal activity and provide analytic tools for personal awareness. The team plans to further develop the user interface and user experience with designs that characterize, analyze and report daily movement in anticipation of increasing daily activity.
By providing an intelligent system that develops big-data models of daily activity and linking it to social circles, this technology has the potential to assist people in becoming more active. Widespread use of this technology could lead to the design and deployment of an ecosystem to monitor movement behavior in daily living conditions. The final version of this technology is designed to provide a cost-effective and accurate method to track caloric intake and expenditure in the palm of an individual's hand. From a healthcare perspective, quantifying and analyzing behaviors could help develop insight into the links between daily behaviors and lifestyle-based diseases.
