CoughTrigger: Earbuds IMU Based Cough Detection Activator Using An Energy-efficient Sensitivity-prioritized Time Series Classifier
Shibo Zhang, Ebrahim Nemati, Minh Dinh, Nathan Folkman, Tousif Ahmed,, Mahbubur Rahman, Jilong Kuang, Nabil Alshurafa, Alex Gao

TL;DR
CoughTrigger leverages low-power IMU sensors in earbuds to activate audio-based cough detection, reducing power consumption and improving detection specificity, validated through experiments on 45 subjects and real-world data.
Contribution
This work introduces a novel IMU-based cough detection activator for earbuds that minimizes power use and enhances detection accuracy compared to traditional audio-only methods.
Findings
Achieved 0.77 AUC score in leave-one-subject-out evaluation.
Validated effectiveness on free-living data.
Implemented on-device for real-time detection.
Abstract
Persistent coughs are a major symptom of respiratory-related diseases. Increasing research attention has been paid to detecting coughs using wearables, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among all types of sensors utilized, microphone is most widely used to detect coughs. However, the intense power consumption needed to process audio signals hinders continuous audio-based cough detection on battery-limited commercial wearable products, such as earbuds. We present CoughTrigger, which utilizes a lower-power sensor, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), in earbuds as a cough detection activator to trigger a higher-power sensor for audio processing and classification. It is able to run all-the-time as a standby service with minimal battery consumption and trigger the audio-based cough detection when a candidate cough is detected from IMU. Besides, the use of IMU brings the benefit of…
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Taxonomy
TopicsRespiratory and Cough-Related Research · Respiratory viral infections research · Speech and Audio Processing
Methodstravel james
