Raising the Bar(ometer): Identifying a User's Stair and Lift Usage Through Wearable Sensor Data Analysis

TL;DR

This paper presents a wearable sensor-based method to accurately classify stair and lift usage, providing insights that could promote healthier lifestyle choices through real-time activity detection.

Contribution

It introduces a new dataset and demonstrates the effectiveness of combining inertial and pressure sensors with machine learning for activity classification.

Findings

Achieved 87.61% accuracy in classifying stair and lift usage.

Combining inertial and pressure sensors improves detection performance.

The method is suitable for real-time activity monitoring.

Abstract

Many users are confronted multiple times daily with the choice of whether to take the stairs or the elevator. Whereas taking the stairs could be beneficial for cardiovascular health and wellness, taking the elevator might be more convenient but it also consumes energy. By precisely tracking and boosting users' stairs and elevator usage through their wearable, users might gain health insights and motivation, encouraging a healthy lifestyle and lowering the risk of sedentary-related health problems. This research describes a new exploratory dataset, to examine the patterns and behaviors related to using stairs and lifts. We collected data from 20 participants while climbing and descending stairs and taking a lift in a variety of scenarios. The aim is to provide insights and demonstrate the practicality of using wearable sensor data for such a scenario. Our collected dataset was used to train and test a Random Forest machine learning model, and the results show that our method is highly accurate at classifying stair and lift operations with an accuracy of 87.61% and a multi-class weighted F1-score of 87.56% over 8-second time windows. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of various types of sensors and data attributes on the model's performance. Our findings show that combining inertial and pressure sensors yields a viable solution for real-time activity detection.