Dealing with sensor displacement in motion-based onbody activity recognition systems

We present a set of heuristics that significantly increase the robustness of motion sensor-based activity recognition with respect to sensor displacement. In this paper placement refers to the position within a single body part (e.g, lower arm). We show how, within certain limits and with modest quality degradation, motion sensorbased activity recognition can be implemented in a displacement tolerant way. We first describe the physical principles that lead to our heuristic. We then evaluate them first on a set of synthetic lower arm motions which are well suited to illustrate the strengths and limits of our approach, then on an extended modes of locomotion problem (sensors on the upper leg) and finally on a set of exercises performed on various gym machines (sensors placed on the lower arm). In this example our heuristic raises the displaced recognition rate from 24% for a displaced accelerometer, which had 96% recognition when not displaced, to 82%.