Sports performance and connected watches: extracting relevant information

Connected watches, rings and phones measure many parameters of our activities, such as the number of steps we take, the distance we travel, the time we sleep, and even our physiology, such as our heart rate, blood circulation or oxygen saturation.

These data can be used to determine caloric expenditure, and possibly also blood pressure or stress levels. This is what Taous-Meriem Laleg, head of the Boost project-team(Bio-informed mOnitoring & Optimization for enhanced Sport & healTh) at the Inria center in Saclay, is trying to calculate.

Connected objects provide us with a lot of data, but we don't know how to interpret it effectively", explains the researcher. Either because it's irrelevant, or because we need to apply signal processing to it to extract a useful indicator.

The team's aim is to use the easily accessible signals from connected objects to develop algorithms capable of interpreting them to extract information useful for assessing athletes' health. The aim is to develop a mathematical model that relates the data in order to understand the interactions between different signals and identify reliable indicators of stress.

Eventually, other relationships could also determine physiological conditions conducive to injury or, on the contrary, to better performance.

It's only a short step from there to applications well beyond the sporting arena, for example in the prevention of fatigue, illness and injury, based on other indicators that are also easily accessible, such as heart rate variability, PPG(photoplethysmography), accelerometer...

For the full article: High-level athletes: what if stress management were as simple as a connected watch?

Illustration : wal_172619 - Pixabay

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