Development of a Ubiquitous Wearable Unit and its Application to Cycling Exercise

Abstract

We embedded control function as well as monitoring physical activity in a wearable unit for controlling several types of powered health promotion machines on standalone and on-site. The unit consisted of a Linux board with an on-board A-D converter that measures 5 channels of biosignals including surface EMG and ECG. The interfaces were wired and wireless LAN ports for connecting networks. Besides, Web-server and a LCD unit were provided for browsing the results at any place. We applied the unit for controlling the cycle ergometer workload in the room and the power-assisted bicycle in the field for live subjects, while monitoring physical activity and estimating fatigue by a fuzzy inference. The results showed a possibility for control of powered health promotion machines by heart rate and muscle activity on-site.