MPTrain: a mobile, music and physiology-based personal trainer

We present MPTrain, a mobile phone based system that takes advantage of the influence of music in exercise performance, enabling users to more easily achieve their exercise goals. MPTrain is designed as a mobile and personal system (hardware and software) that users wear while exercising (walking, jogging or running). MPTrain’s hardware includes a set of physiological sensors wirelessly connected to a mobile phone carried by the user. MPTrain’s software allows the user to enter a desired exercise pattern (in terms of desired heart-rate over time) and assists the user in achieving his/her exercising goals by: (1) constantly monitoring the user’s physiology (heart-rate in number of beats per minute) and movement (speed in number of steps per minute); and (2) selecting and playing music with specific features that will encourage the user to speed up, slow down or keep the pace to be on track with his/her exercise goals.We describe the hardware and software components of the MPTrain system, and present some preliminary results when using MPTrain while jogging.