Phone Gauges Physical Activity

An iPhone application created by University of Houston researchers is providing first-of-its-kind real-time statistics of physical activity around the world. Those annual rankings of America’s fattest and fittest cities that use government statistics and a host of indirect indicators may soon have a little more muscle. The information being collected at the University of Houston provides objective data. The Walk n’ Play iPhone application, available free from Apple’s ‘App Store’, allows users to keep track of their physical activity and compete with other users. The latest version lets players compare themselves to various profiles that represent a region or a skill level. It helps individuals and groups to connect around the concept of daily physical motion– similar to a real-time Twitter where your feet do the tweeting. Anonymous data from Walk n’ Play users are sent to a server at University of Houston’s Computational Physiology Lab.

The data includes physical activity, the intensity of activity and the geographic region of the player. Using the information, researchers are able to objectively measure physical activity and break down the data by location. Researchers believe that the applications for the technology are far reaching and will result in real-world data that has previously been difficult to collect. The Walk n’ Play app tallies a users’ every movement over the course of a day, including walking and climbing stairs, and translates it into calories burned. The game gives an accurate calorie count thanks to a biomedical calibration process applied on the iPhone’s accelerometer that senses motion and can be made to measure metabolic activity. In addition, the Walk n’ Play application brings a health benefit to gamers, creating an element of competition. It allows users to employ the buddy system, whether that buddy is a real-life friend or an avatar representative of a certain population.

More information:

http://www.cpl.uh.edu/projects/walk-n-play/

http://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2010articles/Feb2010/02082010iPhoneApp-Pavlidis.php