Robust estimation of physical activity by adaptively fusing multiple parameters

Raising the awareness of being physically active by utilizing wearable body sensors has become a popular research topic. Recent approaches combine physical and physiological information to obtain a precise prediction of a person;s physical activity ratio. However, the error in the determination of physical activity due to invalid physiological values that are resulting from underlying signal disturbances, has so far not been considered. We therefore present a robust measure of activity that fuses accelerometer data, heart rate and other personalized features, and is adaptively responding to missing physiological sensor data. To set up the model, we make use of regression analysis (MARS). Our findings indicate the need for considering signal quality when estimating physical activity. The predictive model shows close agreement (R² = 0.97) to the reference from indirect calorimetry, even if the physiological information is partly corrupted.