CoreMoni-α: Consideration of Long-Term Feedback Methods in Core Training

Abstract

The proposed system, CoreMoni-α, aims to support core training and promote health maintenance through training, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when access to gyms and outdoor activities is limited. The system accurately evaluates a user’s posture from an inertial motion unit and provides long-term feedback through a wearable sensor and a smartphone. This system consists of two parts. There are two functions: one that supports training in real-time and one that allows users to look back on their training scores and compete with their rivals. A three-stage method is used for real-time posture determination. There are three stages: calibration, judgment, and real-time feedback. In order to make appropriate judgments for each user, calibration is performed to take into account the degree of curvature of each user's waist. After that, a threshold value judgment is performed within the judgment program, and appropriate feedback is provided to the user via the smartphone, depending on the judgment result. The main focus of this research is on long-term feedback. This time, in addition to real-time feedback functions, we focused on long-term feedback. Long-term feedback has two main functions. The first is that you can view your training results as a history. By visualizing the judgment results in text and pie charts, users can check what changes their own training has produced so far, and they can check their own training results objectively over the long term. The second feature is a ranking function that allows users to compete with other users. The ranking changes depending on the ratio of posture judgment results (good and bad) and counting frequency, which can stimulate their competitive spirit. This can be expected to maintain and improve motivation. Evaluation experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the system. Twenty subjects in their 20s to 50s participated. The experiment was divided into a group with the system and a group without the system, and the experiment was conducted for about two months. We will evaluate things such as how long users were able to continue using the system, whether their posture improved compared to two months ago, and what kind of difference was made with or without the system. The results confirmed that training using this system improved trunk stability and muscle strength. Furthermore, according to the subjects' self-evaluation, the use of the system contributed to increasing their motivation for training.