Upper Fitness Personal Assistant: Body-Guts

Abstract

This paper proposes Body-Guts, a dry-fit apparel that plays the role of monitoring the wearer's health and gives the user a reason to exercise more often. Nowadays, exercise is so essential that many do not pay much attention to it; since then, many people suffer from being overweight and from diseases that are caused by it. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the year 2010, 60 % of Malaysians with age above 18 are overweight which also causes the problem of heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. The Body-Guts is knitted with an electrocardiography (ECG) heart rate sensor and electromyography (EMG) muscle sensor. These sensors provide relevant data which will be analyzed in the Arduino microcontroller and then transmit significant information to a smartphone application via Bluetooth. Electrode pads will collect EMG signals which allow the monitoring of muscle stress via a graphical user interface (GUI) in mobile application, whereas a heart pulse sensor is used to obtain heartbeat rate for the calculation of calories burned. Furthermore, the mobile application also includes workout tutorial and a list of required nutrients together with a workout monitoring system based on EMG and calories burned. Throughout the ECG experiment, the ECG sensor results collected via mobile "Bluetooth spp" apps as compared to radial pulse have an accuracy of up to 99.83 %, whereas the EMG that uses a conductive fabric as adhesive gel achieves a waveform that demonstrates the forearm strength produced.