Leveraging Android Wear for fitness reward programs

A wearable device is a portable  minicomputer (or electronic sensor compute device) that can be worn on the body for hands-free use.  It is a sophisticated device that provides computational, sensory, scanning, communication capabilities,
enhances user experience, and  allows users to access information in real time.

Wearable devices include smart glasses, smart watches, wrist bands, e-textiles, smart fabrics, etc.

The Android wear watch is a computerized wristwatch with functionality that is enhanced beyond timekeeping. It has Android wear OS and is compatible with Android smartphone having Android OS 4.3 and above. It has computational capabilities and built-in sensors for sensing the heart rate, steps count, GPS locations, voice command recognition using Google Now.

Some features of an Android wear watch (e.g. Gear Live, Moto 360, G Watch) are:

•  Organizes information, suggests what user needs, and shows it to the user even before user asks
•  Gets messages from friends, meeting notifications, and weather updates
• Enables user to respond to texts, instant messages and emails by voice, just by saying “Ok Google”
• Supports voice command questioning and answering
• Senses the heart rate in beats per minute using a heart rate sensor
• Counts number of steps using a pedometer
• Locates the user using GPS
• Interacts  with the pre-installed Google Fit application
• Fitness reward program solution using Android wear watch

From our experience, we have built a solution using Android wear for rewarding users who follow  a fitness regime. There are challenges involved in tracking the fitness of the users and reward them based on the achievement of fitness goals set for them. The purpose and focus of this solution is to get the user’s fitness data like heart rate and step count in a secured and reliable way without compromising on the user’s privacy.

The fitness reward program solution that is built using Android wear SDK and Java EE platform, has three components:
Android wear device application – This application runs on the Android watch and captures the relevant information like heart rate and step counts

Smartphone application – This application is responsible for receiving / transferring data from the Android wear device application  to the server application and vice-versa.

Server application – Helps in storing, processing and retrieval of fitness data of the users, maintains the fitness goals and reward catalog.  This application gives all the required web services to be consumed by the smartphone application. It also provides an aggregated view of information in the form of reports & dashboards.

User wears Android wear watch and launches the Android wear app before starting the fitness activity. The watch is to be paired with the user’s Android smartphone over Bluetooth. The fitness app on the watch records heart rate and step counts using respective sensors and sends these to the user’s smartphone application over Bluetooth. The paired smartphone application uploads this fitness data to the server.    This data is also stored locally on the smartphone device for offline usage. The data is synchronized with the server whenever connectivity is available between the smartphone and the server.  Based on the goals that the user has signed up for, (s) he accumulates points that indicate percentage attainment of the goal.

Figure 3: Fitness reward program solution overview

Integration with Google Fit API and fit cloud

Google has released the Google Fit platform that allows developers to upload fitness data to a centralized repository where users can access their data from different devices and apps in one location.  Fitness apps can store data from any wearable or sensor.   User’s fitness data is persisted when they upgrade their fitness devices. As Android wear watch vendors have provided wide support for Google Fit API, fitness reward program application is integrated with Google Fit platform

Figure 5: Google Fit Platform overview

Advantages

•  Google Fit store provides centralized data store for storing the fitness data securely
• Wide range of smart watch and fitness band vendors like Jawbone, Fitbit etc. have integrated their fitness devices with Google Fit, through their proprietary mobile applications
• Google Fit provides the sensor/device independent fitness data storage
• With the use of Google Fit, the computing resources for processing and storage of fitness data is not required.
• Wearable app, through the smartphone application, can directly upload and retrieve the user’s fitness data

Challenges

Some of the challenges while building the fitness reward program solution were:

• The user wearing smartwatch cannot be authenticated i.e. the application cannot prove the user’s identity.
• User may use some other person’s watch to perform fitness activity for getting the rewards for him/ her
  The distance walked by user is calculated from step counts, which is an approximation of the distance walked
• There is hindrance in user’s privacy due to this smartwatch addition
•  For communication and data storage, smartwatch must be paired with smartphone over Bluetooth and needs to be in the Bluetooth range. For some of the hands-free activities like fitness activity, it is not possible always to carry smartphone and keep it in the Bluetooth range.
• Battery drains out faster for continuous sensor readings

Conclusion

Smart watches have computational and communication capabilities,  built-in sensors for sensing the heart rate, steps count, GPS location, voice recognition and many more features. Smart watch vendors are adding more and more sensors to enhance the usage of smart watches in different domains effectively.  One of the primary uses is for fitness / fitness tracking applications.   These smart watches find immense use in health care and insurance industries, which can be extended to care giving industries also. Banking, -commerce and manufacturing are other vertical businesses where Android Wear can be used.

The challenges of authentication, privacy issues and battery drainage would have to be addressed by vendors which would be possible with evolution of technology.  For e.g., Nymi band authenticates a user based on his/ her heartbeat which is unique for a person.   So, if this technology is integrated into all smart devices, the authentication issue is addressed.

Given so many existing features, it is only a matter of time before more users embrace these smart devices for fitness / wellness and other activities.  Also with technological advancements, cost of these devices will further come down which will drive higher user adoption.

Glossary

Fit API  -  Google has released fitness API for integrating with Google fit cloud
GPS    - Global positioning system
BPM    - Beats per Minute

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