sensors

Article
Human Physical Activity Recognition Using
Smartphone Sensors
Robert-Andrei Voicu 1 , Ciprian Dobre 2 , Lidia Bajenaru 2 and Radu-Ioan Ciobanu 1, *
1 Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest 060042
, Romania; [email protected]
2 National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics, Bucharest 011455 , Romania;
[email protected] (C.D.); [email protected] (L.B.)
* Correspondence: [email protected]




Received: 20 December 2018; Accepted: 18 January 2019; Published: 20 January 2019


Abstract: Because the number of elderly people is predicted to increase quickly in the upcoming
years, “aging in place” (which refers to living at home regardless of age and other factors) is becoming
an important topic in the area of ambient assisted living. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a human
physical activity recognition system based on data collected from smartphone sensors. The proposed
approach implies developing a classifier using three sensors available on a smartphone: accelerometer,
gyroscope, and gravity sensor. We have chosen to implement our solution on mobile phones because
they are ubiquitous and do not require the subjects to carry additional sensors that might impede their
activities. For our proposal, we target walking, running, sitting, standing, ascending, and descending
stairs. We evaluate the solution against two datasets (an internal one collected by us and an external
one) with great effect. Results show good accuracy for recognizing all six activities, with especially
good results obtained for walking, running, sitting, and standing. The system is fully implemented
on a mobile device as an Android application.

Keywords: activity recognition; machine learning; smartphones; ambient assisted living

1. Introduction
Recent studies (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_STAT-08-119_en.htm?locale=en) have shown
that the number of elderly people will quickly increase in the upcoming years, which comes as a natural
evolution of the fact that the median age of the general population is expected to grow (http://www.un.
org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/ageing/WPA2017_Highlights.pdf). From 2015,
deaths in the European Union are projected to outnumber births, while almost three-times more people
will be 80 or more in 2060. This will result in a growing number of older adults living alone and in need
of intensive care. The social and economic point of view will be impacted by the care and assistance
needs as a result of the trend of rapid growth in the number of persons with physical disabilities. On
the one hand, these trends will lead to dramatic challenges for the healthcare system, state pensions
schemes, and employers alike. On the other hand, they will offer innovation and business opportunities
for technology providers in the field of innovative ICT-enabled assisted living or “ambient assisted living”
(AAL). The main scope of such solutions is to apply the ambient intelligence (AmI) concept and technologies
to help people live longer in their natural environment.
For people to remain at home, several facilities need to be offered: monitoring health status,
detecting emergency situations such as debilitating falls, and notifying healthcare providers of potential
changes in health status or emergency situations. The end goal is what is commonly referred to
as “aging in place”, which is defined by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as “the ability
to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably, regardless of age,

Sensors 2019, 19, 458; doi:10.3390/s19030458 www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors

Sensors 2019, 19, 458 2 of 19

income, or ability level” (https://www.cdc.gov/healthyplaces/terminology.htm). According to a 2010

AARP survey [1], 88% of people over age 65 want to stay in their residence for as long as possible.
In this paper, we focus on one very important component of aging in place, namely activity
recognition, which represents a system’s ability to recognize actions performed by users based on a set
of observations of their behavior and the environment they find themselves in (being sometimes also
referred to as behavior recognition). It can be employed to track the behavior of older adults and ensure
that they behave in normal parameters. Furthermore, an intelligent activity recognition system can
also detect when the older adults are passive and can recommend that they move around, take a walk,
etc. This can be done using various senses similar to the ones humans have. Some solutions are based
on computer vision [2], while other works have been based on audio recognition techniques [3] (rather
a complementary addition to already existing methods) or radio frequency identification (RFIDs) [4–6].
Another sense suitable for human activity recognition is motion, recorded through different sensors.
Since we believe that various types of human-carried sensors might discourage older adults
from participating in an activity recognition-based system, we focus on one sensor-based ubiquitous
piece of technology, namely smartphones, which are far more than just communication devices.
They are packed with high-end hardware and features for every type of user. Additionally, a large
number of sensors can be found inside them, including motion sensors. Therefore, this paper studies
human activity recognition and how it can be achieved using the sensors available on a smartphone.
The main objective of this paper is to recognize the type of physical activity the user is performing
accurately, using the sensors of the phone. This includes analyzing the current solutions offered
as a result of other research, finding ways to improve them, and a new approach for solving the stated
problem. Moreover, the proposed solution is tested against a newly-collected dataset, as well as an
already existing one. As for further development, secondary objectives aim to make the phone react in
an appropriate way for each kind of activity, meaning that when one of the activities is detected, the
phone will take an action or will notify the user with helpful pieces of advice in the given situation,
depending on the settings.
The proposed approach implies developing a classifier using three sensors available on a smartphone
(accelerometer, gyroscope, and gravity sensor), while adhering to the best machine learning (ML) practices.
This involves collecting a relatively large dataset for training the classifier, extracting features from the data,
and using an ML algorithm to classify the activities, with the following options being accounted for:
walking, running, sitting, standing, climbing stairs, going down the stairs.
The obtained results show that human activity recognition can be successfully achieved using
a smartphone’s sensors, with some activities’ accuracy reaching values as high as 94%. Some activities
are more difficult to identify, as a result of the similarities between them. This is the case of climbing and
going down stairs, which are often mistaken for each other or even for walking. However, the proposed
solution manages to correctly identify these activities as well, although with a slightly higher error
rate. Moreover, after evaluating the proposed solution against two datasets, we conclude that it can
also be adapted to other recognized datasets.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the motivation of this
paper, and then, Section 3 describes some of the related work in the area of human physical activity
recognition and how it is used in real life. Section 4 further describes the proposed solution in great
detail, explaining the data collection, feature extraction and the ML algorithm that was used. Section 5
describes how the solution was evaluated and reports performance results of the activity recognition
algorithm, while Section 6 concludes the paper and presents future work.

2. Motivation
In light of recent advancements in technology, especially in domains like artificial intelligence
and machine learning, most of the gadgets people use in their day-to-day life appear not to be used to
their full potential, and mobile devices are no exception.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 3 of 19

Activity recognition is one of the many sub-domains of mobile technology that has escalated
quickly over the past few years [7]. Its areas of use cover smart homes [8], fitness tracking, healthcare
monitoring solutions [3,9], security and surveillance applications [10], tele-immersion applications [11],
etc. Currently, with the boost in power smartphones have been given lately, most of this technology
is being transferred to the mobile world. Currently, the simplest and most common usage of activity
recognition on phones is represented by fitness applications, especially running tracking, a simple
search on the Play Store offering tens of choices. Recently, given the whole uncertainty surrounding
the security and privacy of user data, steps have been taken towards using activity recognition for
user authentication.
As mentioned, multiple ways of recognizing human activity have already been suggested.
Human physical activity recognition based on computer vision [2] is one of them. As an example,
one solution [12] used Kinect sensors to detect skeleton data from the human body and identify
the activity based on the information extracted. The authors achieved good results, correctly identifying
the performed activity in approximately four fifths of the attempts. However, the main drawback of
this method is the necessity of a visual sensor, which, although it has good accuracy, does not allow for
too much mobility.
Other research in the area of activity recognition takes into consideration the possibility of using
RFIDs to identify the action a person is executing [6]. This is done by exploiting passive RFID
technology to localize objects in real time and then infer their movements and interactions. The authors
were able to recognize actions such as making coffee or tea, preparing a sandwich, or getting a bowl of
cereal, with probabilities higher than 90%.
Our paper targets a third type of activity recognition, which is based on motion detection using
sensors found in a smartphone. This solution attempts to improve the previous two methods in terms of
mobility and simplicity. As smartphones are very portable, mobility is no issue in this case, with activity
recognition being available in any environment. The other target, simplicity, is also reachable thanks
to the wide availability of the mobile devices. Thus, the potential of this approach is boosted by the
opportunity to give people something that is very accessible and easy to use.

3. Related Work
During the last decade, with the new discoveries in the world in artificial intelligence and machine
learning, activity recognition has received a significant share of attention. Throughout the course of
these last 10 years, constant improvements have been made in this domain, early studies starting from
gesture spotting with body-worn inertial sensors [13] and state-of-the-art solutions offering complex
human activity recognition using smartphone and wrist-worn motion sensors [14]. In this section,
we analyze some of the other methods of detecting user activity and see how they compare to our
proposed solution.

3.1. Early Attempts

One of the early attempts to recognize human activities using sensors was through body-worn
sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes [13], in order to detect a vast range of user activities,
some of these being pressing a light button, performing a handshake, picking a phone up, putting
a phone down, opening a door, drinking, using a spoon, or eating hand-held food (e.g., chocolate bars).
For this, a set of sensors was placed on the arm of the tester, having one end on the wrist and one end
on the upper arm, near the shoulder. The data collected consisted of relative orientation information,
such as the angle the hand was being held at and the movement of the hand. The interpretation
of the results was done using two metrics. The first one was recall, computed as the ratio between
recognized and relevant gestures (with obtained values of 0.87), while the second one was precision,
computed as the percentage of recognized gestures from all retrieved data (obtaining values of 0.62).
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 4 of 19

3.2. Similar Approaches

A solution somewhat similar to our proposal experimented with human activity recognition
using cell phone accelerometers [15]. The authors chose to use only the accelerometer sensor because,
at that time, it was the only significant motion sensor used by most mobile devices. In the mean time,
several other sensors have reached the vast majority of smartphones. The activities under observation
were walking, jogging, sitting, standing, climbing stairs, and descending stairs. The study was divided
into three main sections: data collection, feature generation, and experimental work.
The first step, data collection, was done with the help of twenty-nine users that carried a mobile
device in their trouser pocket while doing casual activities. Having also tested the possibility of
20-s stints, each activity was finally performed in 10-s stints, reading data from sensors every 50 ms.
Not every user made the same number of attempts, the number of sets collected being different for
each person and also for each activity performed. Because this solution implied using a classification
algorithm, in the following step, the main goal was shaping the data so that they could be passed as
input to existent algorithms. In this step, named feature generation, some computation was done on
each set of 10-s sensor readings, resulting in six types of features: average, standard deviation, average
absolute difference, average resultant acceleration, time between peaks, and binned distribution.
The final step of the practical part was experimenting with the extracted features and with three
classification techniques, namely decision trees, logistic regression, and multilayer neural networks.
The results showed good percentages of recognizing walking (92%), jogging (98%), sitting (94%),
and standing (91%), these being the average values over the three classification methods, whereas
climbing upstairs and downstairs had relatively low percentages. The last two activities averaged
49%, respectively 37% over the three classifiers, increasing to 60% and 50% if the logistic regression
were not taken into account. This led to the two activities being removed altogether in the end.
Instead, a new activity was added for climbing stairs, with an average accuracy of 77%, still significantly
lower than what was obtained for the other four activities, but more reliable.
In comparison to the solution proposed in this paper, this approach had the following drawbacks:
it used less sensors (only one, compared to our four); the data were collected while holding the device
in just one position (compared to five in our case); and the accuracy for activities involving stairs
was lower than what we managed to obtain, as shown in Section 5.
A survey of similar approaches was performed in 2015 [16], where the authors analyzed activity
recognition with smartphone sensors. They categorized the type of sensors existing in smartphones
(accelerometer, ambient temperature sensor, gravity sensor, gyroscope, light sensor, linear acceleration,
magnetometer, barometer, proximity sensor, humidity sensor, etc.), as well as the types of activities that
can be recognized, ranging from simple activities like walking, sitting, or standing, to more complex
ones such as shopping, taking a bus, or driving a car. Furthermore, activities can also be split into living
activities (eating, cooking, brushing teeth, etc.), working activities (cleaning, meeting, taking a break,
working, etc.), or health activities (exercising, falling, following routines, etc.). Very importantly,
the authors also extracted some challenges related to smartphone-based activity recognition, among
which are subject sensitivity, location sensitivity, activity complexity, energy and resource constraints,
as well as insufficient training sets.

3.3. Multi-Sensor Approaches

One of the more recent and complex studies proposed a solution based on both smartphones
and wrist-worn motion sensors [14]. The main idea of this approach is that the way smartphones
are held by their users (e.g., in the trouser pocket) is not suitable for recognizing human activities
that involve hand gestures. That is why additional sensors are used besides the ones from the device.
Both sets of sensors included the accelerometer, gyroscope, and linear acceleration.
The data used were collected for thirteen activities, from ten participants, but only seven of those
activities were performed by all the participants, which are exactly the activities that the proposed
solution is aiming to recognize. Each activity was performed for 3 min, the total amount being 30 min
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 5 of 19

for each activity, resulting in a dataset of 390 min. All data collection was performed by carrying two
mobile phones. Therefore, instead of using wrist-worn sensors, a second smartphone was placed
on the right wrist of the users. Only two features were extracted, namely mean and standard deviation.
These have been chosen for the low complexity and the reasonable accuracy shown for various
activities. The results were composed of combinations of sensors. Each sensor was evaluated alone and
then in combination with the other ones and also combining the two positions for the mobile devices.
There were a few errors in recognizing the activities when using only the accelerometer and gyroscope
at the wrist position, the biggest confusion being between walking and walking upstairs, with an
accuracy of 53%, thus averaging 83% together with the other activities. The results were improved
when combining the two test positions, the overall accuracy increasing to 98%. The main drawback of
this solution, when compared to the proposed solution, was the use of two mobile devices, which is
unfeasible in real life.
An interesting project that also used multiple sensors from Android devices is Social Ambient
Assisted Living or SociAAL (http://grasia.fdi.ucm.es/sociaal/), where virtual living labs were created
using a framework specifically designed for this purpose, called PHAT (Physical Human Activity
Tester) [17]. The devices in the project used Android and were able to take advantage of all sensors
that can be found on such devices, including camera, microphone, accelerometer, user input, etc. [18].

3.4. Fitness
One area that has resonated greatly with activity recognition lately is sports, especially fitness
and running. There are countless examples of applications that use human activity recognition to help
users track their training sessions. Samsung Health (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.
sec.android.app.shealth) offers such a tool beside many more, but there are other apps that focus entirely
on running and walking, like Nike+ (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nike.plusgps)
and Endomondo (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.endomondo.android), or even
cycling and swimming like Strava (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.strava). Although
these apps recognize a very limited number of activities, they have excellent results, being extremely
accurate in detecting the type of activity performed, offering their clients benefits like auto pause when
they detect the user is not running anymore and personalized training patterns.
Furthermore, in recent years, there has been a significant growth in the amount of smart watches
and fitness bands such as Fitbit (https://www.fitbit.com/) and Apple Watch (https://www.apple.
com/lae/apple-watch-series-4/), which are able to track the number of steps, sleep patterns, passive
periods, etc. These kinds of devices have started being used as components of more complex systems
that employ many sensors to perform in-depth activity recognition for scenarios such as healthcare [19],
healthy aging [20], persuasive technology for healthy behavior [21], etc.

3.5. Human–Computer Interaction

People’s pleasure in tendency and to play never disappears, and there have been many
improvements in the gaming area. In the past few years, activity recognition has become an active
part of playing, with the creation of technologies like Kinect [12], PlayStation Move [22], and Nintendo
Wii [23]. While some of these recognize activity only by using visual computing (like Kinect), the others
also rely on sensors. The Nintendo Wii has a remote that has a motion sensor that makes the activity
recognition possible. All these are used in different ways to play games and even to create a healthy
habit. By recognizing the activities a user is performing, the computer is able to understand the user
and give a response based on human reactions. This way, the human–computer interaction is possible.

3.6. Healthcare Monitoring

Recent studies [24] have shown that user activity and behavior can be used to indicate the health
status of humans. Investigations have led medical experts to the conclusion that there is a strong
correlation between the amount of physical activity and the different diseases related to obesity
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 6 of 19

and metabolism. Considering the great quantity of data that can be collected regarding a person’s
activity, the idea of using these data to gather information about the human medical condition has
grown rapidly. Although it is believed that this may be a better solution than a time-limited medical
appointment, it is not regarded as a replacement, but more like an additional tool.
One of the earliest attempts to tackle this problem [25] was made using a Bluetooth-based
accelerometer worn in three positions and RFID modules used to tag objects used daily. The paper
concluded that most people stay in one of the following states: sitting, standing, lying, walking,
and running. Furthermore, the described solution included a wrist-worn sensor used to detect hand
activity in order to improve the accuracy of human activity recognition. This sensor is also fitted with
an RFID reader to detect tags placed on certain objects. When the sensor reads a nearby tag, it offers
data describing the hand motion when using that object.
For the evaluation part, an analysis was made over several activities coupled with each body
state like drinking while sitting, standing, or walking and ironing, or brushing hair while standing.
The results showed a significant accuracy improvement with the use of RFID, the overall value
increasing from 82%–97%. When taking into account only the body state recognition, the results
averaged 94%, labeling walking as the hardest activity to identify.

4. Proposed Solution
This section contains a step-by-step description of the proposed solution. Section 4.1 presents
the process of collecting the dataset and the testing data. Section 4.2 explains the features extracted
from the data, while Section 4.3 offers an overview of the classification algorithm.

4.1. Data Collection

The data collection can be separated into two groups: training data and testing data.
Moreover, the testing data collection is also divided in half: one part for the data we gathered ourselves
using an application specifically created for this purpose (the “internal dataset”) and the other one for
an external dataset [26]. This partitioning of the testing data was necessary because the two datasets
used data from different sensors (as shown in Table 1).

Table 1. Sensors registered in each dataset.

Dataset Sensors
Internal dataset Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Gravity
External dataset Accelerometer, Gravity, Linear Acceleration, Magnetometer

The data collection Android application offers multiple customization options, while the
default values set are the ones the the proposed solution uses for the data in the training dataset.
Regarding activity selection, the user can choose between walking (default value), running, sitting,
standing, and going up or down the stairs. Moreover, the user can also set the sensors’ reading interval
(which is set to 50 ms by default) and the sample recording duration (set to 10 s). Finally, users are also
able to choose the sensors that will collect data, from accelerometer, gyroscope, linear acceleration
sensor, magnetometer, and gravity sensor (by default, only the first four are enabled).
To save time and resources, this application is used for feature generation as well. The process
of extracting features from the collected data is described in Section 4.2. For testing purposes,
this application also has implemented capabilities of activity recognition. After collecting a set of data
from sensors, activity recognition based on that data can be triggered from a button, the result being
returned to the user with a Toast.
For the internal dataset collection, five participants were involved, whose role was to help collect
usage data by carrying their smartphones while performing the following activities: walking, running,
sitting, standing, climbing stairs, and going down the stairs. During these activities, the Android data
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 7 of 19

collection application (shown in Figure 1) collected data from three sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope,
and gravity sensor. Because of the way machine learning algorithms work, reading a large amount of
data at once was not an option, so, as suggested in [15], each entry in the dataset was created using 10-s
segments. For each segment, our app recorded raw data from the sensors, each sensor providing three
axes: X, Y, Z. The main difficulty of this part was caused by the fact that the Android platform does not
allow reading data from a sensor at an exact moment in time. In fact, the data can be read only when a
change is detected in the sensor reading. On top of that, different sensors report data at different times,
and only one sensor reading can be accessed at a time. To overcome these drawbacks, the proposed
solution calculated the average number of readings for each sensor (as shown in Table 2) and, by taking
a margin of error, kept only the first 100 readings from each sensor per 10-s interval. In the end, each 10-s
segment provided a set of 900 readings (300 for each sensor, 100 for each axis).

Figure 1. Main screen of the data collection application, before and after recording data.

The collected data were written to a file stored locally on the phone’s internal storage.
When the sensors listener detects a change, it checks which sensor triggered it and saves the readings
in the corresponding list. This step is repeated during the whole recording period for each change
in the sensor’s values. When the time is out, only one hundred values per axis are kept, with three
axes per sensor. Then, features were extracted from the data, and they were written to the file as one
line, one after another.

Table 2. Average number of sensor readings per 10-second intervals.

Accelerometer Gyroscope Gravity

164 124 124

4.2. Feature Extraction

After collecting the data, it had to go through a transformation process in order to extract features
that provide all the necessary information to the algorithm used for ML. For every set of readings,
we computed five types of features, each generating a number of inputs for the learning algorithm.
A brief description of the features can be found below.

4.2.1. Average
There were nine inputs for this feature, which represented the average value of readings per axis,
computed as follows (where N is the number of readings for each sensor per 10 s, for this and all the
following equations):
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 8 of 19

N
1
N ∑ xi (1)
i =1

4.2.2. Average Absolute Difference

This feature (also with nine inputs) is the average absolute difference between the value of each
of the readings and the mean value, for each axis, computed as:

N
1
N ∑ | xi − µ | (2)
i =1

4.2.3. Standard Deviation

The standard deviation was employed to quantify the variation of readings from the mean value,
for each axis (resulting in nine inputs):
v
N
u
u1
t
N ∑ xi − µ (3)
i =1

4.2.4. Average Resultant Acceleration

This feature, having the inputs, was computed as the average of the square roots of the sum
of the squared value of each reading:

N
1
q
N ∑ xi 2 + yi 2 + zi 2 (4)
i =1

4.2.5. Histogram
Finally, the histogram implies finding the marginal values for each axis (minimum -maximum),
dividing that range into ten equal-sized intervals and determining what percentage of readings fall
within each of the intervals (resulting in 90 inputs):

N
1
N ∑ [(xi in bj ) → 1, j = 1...10] (5)
i =1

4.3. Classification Algorithm

Many machine learning solutions have been employed in activity recognition [9], including
C4.5 decision trees, RIPPERdecision rules, naive Bayes classifiers [27], support-vector machines
(SVMs) [28], random forests, bootstrap aggregating (bagging) [27], adaptive boosting (AdaBoost),
k-nearest neighbor classifiers [27], hidden Markov models [29], etc. For the training of our classifier,
the proposed solution used a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) [30]. The choice of using this type of neural
network was made in accordance with several factors:

• simplicity—the MLP is a feedforward neural network, which means there is no cycle between
the nodes, making it one of the simplest types of neural networks, so it is very easy to create and use;
• resource consumption: due to its simplicity, this classifier is very cost-effective; given the fact
that needed to run on a mobile device and the resources were limited, the results to resource
consumption ratio is very high;
• input: the restrictions related to the input are very permissive, the perceptron accepting a wide
range of input types;
• output: the network outputs the probabilities of every possible class.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 9 of 19

The MLP used in this project consisted of three layers: an input layer, a hidden layer, and an output
layer. The number of inputs was equal to the number of neurons in the input layer, and the number of
outputs matched the number of possible classes, that being the activities accounted for. The network did
not output an explicit class, but the probabilities associated with each activity being the one performed.
For implementing the multi-layer perceptron, we used DL4J (https://deeplearning4j.org), a Java
library used to configure deep neural networks made of multiple layers, with only a small effort of
configuration. The main feature that DL4J puts at the users’ disposal is a MultiLayerConfiguration
object, which configures the network’s layers and parameters. For our MLP, the input layer
was the starting layer, having 120 inputs representing the neurons of the layer (equal to the number of
features generated for each subset of data, namely 9 each for average, absolute difference, and standard
deviation, 3 for acceleration, and 90 for the histogram) and 18 outputs. The hidden layer was the only
middle layer of the perceptron, with 18 inputs and nine outputs. The final layer of the perceptron
was the output layer, with nine inputs and six outputs, representing the final output of the network.
As can be observed, except for the input layer, the number of inputs for each layer needed to be equal
to the number of outputs of the previous layer. The data passed to the input layer and implicitly to
the perceptron consisted of the features generated based on extracted information, as specified in
Section 4.2.
Besides the layers, several other parameters have been configured for the neural network.
The first parameter is the activation function, which is a node added to the output of the perceptron,
used to determine the output of the network. The answer offered by the activation function can only be
interpreted as a yes or a no. The type used in this implementation is the tanh function, which is a sigmoidal
function whose range is in (−1, 1). This was chosen because we needed to find the probabilities of each
action being the one performed, and the sigmoidal function is best fit for this, having the advantages
of being non-linear and differentiable. Moreover, because the lowest value is −1, the tanh activation
function clearly shows which choices are incorrect, giving them negative values.
Given the fact that weights associated with the inputs are highly important, their initialization
is also important, having an impact on the convergence rate of the network. The method used by our
proposed network was based on the Xavier algorithm [31], which determines the “right” values based
on the number of input and output neurons, thus keeping them in a fair and sensible range of values.
Another parameter strongly connected to the weights is the learning rate. It controls
the adjustments of the network’s weights, the modifications being made by following the formula
new_weight = existing_weight − learning_weight × gradient. Setting this parameter correctly
is important because, if it is too small, the network will take too long to respond, and if it is too
large, the network might return incorrect or uninformed results. The value of the learning rate in this
implementation was set to 0.1.
With regards to the training of the network, a necessary parameter is the number of iterations,
which represents how many repetitions are made in the training part. In each repetition, the training
data were passed to the network one at a time, and the weights were modified accordingly. Just like
the learning rate, this parameter has a high significance, since choosing it too small or too large will
negatively affect the output. Given that the number of inputs of the neural network was relatively high,
the number of iterations was limited to 100. An extra setting that is of great significance for the optimal
running of the perceptron is the activation of backpropagation. This algorithm used the Delta rule [32]
to find the minimum value for the cost function in order to find the best weights that helped solve the
learning process.
The end result was an Android activity recognition application. It used the features generated
from the data collected with the first application to train the neural network and recognize user activity
based on this network. The training of the network was run only once during the lifecycle of the
app. This step, as well as other initial settings were presented to the user via the UI as a loading
screen. Once all the preparations were done, users could make a few personalized settings such as
how often they wanted the activity to be recognized or if notifications should be sent to inform about
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 10 of 19

the result. If the latter was checked, every time an activity was recognized, a notification would be
sent on behalf of the application, asking the user if the prediction was good or not. The user’s answer
to the notification was used internally to improve the accuracy and also keep a record of the results.

5. Results
This section presents the results obtained by the current solution and offers a thorough analysis
and evaluation. Section 5.1 contains charts with data read from each sensor, for every type of action.
Then, in Section 5.2, we compare the results obtained when testing with the two available datasets.
Finally, Section 5.3 consists of a brief analysis of the results, while also examining the possibility of
improving them. It should be mentioned that the system on which the solution was implemented
and tested had an Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU clocked at 2.80 GHz and 8 GB of RAM. Thus, it had
enough processing power to facilitate the use of more resource-consuming technologies, but the
limited amount of memory restricted the size and depth of the neural network. Furthermore, the
Android application was run on a high-end OnePlus 5T device, which was one of the best performing
smartphones at the time of writing this paper, having no problem in running even the most heavy of
applications.

5.1. Data Interpretation

As mentioned in Section 4.1, the two datasets used did not contain data from exactly the same
sensors, but because the graphical shape of the data was the same in both of them, this section presents
the testing data, which were the same regardless of the training data. The following charts were also
offered in the application when users requested collecting new data. In the following sections, besides
the interpretation of each chart independently, a comparison of the similarities and differences is offered
where necessary. For each action, the figures present (in this order) data from the accelerometer, gravity
sensor, gyroscope, linear acceleration sensor, and magnetometer. Although both datasets contained
data recorded while holding the device in different positions, the charts presented here were generated
while holding the device in the right trouser pocket, oriented downward and facing the inside of the
trouser.

5.1.1. Walking
As can be observed in Figure 2, walking generates a periodic pattern for each of the sensors,
thus offering a large amount of information to the learning algorithm, so that the classifier can
distinguish it from other activities easier. Of course, this is just one possible pattern, and depending
on characteristics like age, gender, height, or weight, it can vary slightly. However, this affects only
less significant metrics such as the interval of the repetitions or the range of values, but the shape and
pattern of the movement is almost the same.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 11 of 19

Figure 2. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while walking.

5.1.2. Running
Running implies a motion similar to walking, but executed faster. Looking at Figure 3, a periodic
pattern can also be noticed for this activity, with a shorter time difference between periods for running
than for walking. Although the patterns for the two activities have some common attributes, a clear
difference can be seen from each sensor, especially the accelerometer and gravity sensor.

Figure 3. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while running.

5.1.3. Sitting
Unlike the previous two activities, sitting is a motionless activity, if it can be called an activity at all.
Figure 4 shows that, with the exception of the gyroscope and the linear acceleration sensor, all other
sensors display little change in the values of each of the three axes, the accelerometer and gravitational
data being almost unchanged. Even the first two mentioned sensors show much less fluctuation than
walking and running, thus making sitting very easy to differentiate from them.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 12 of 19

Figure 4. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while sitting.

5.1.4. Standing
Standing is also an activity than involves staying still, so the charts shown in Figure 5 are similar
to the ones from Figure 4. Some differences can be seen in terms of gyroscope and linear acceleration,
but the main indicator when trying to distinguish the two actions is the position of the axes on the graphs.
When switching from one action to the other, an interchange between the Y and Z axes can be observed.
Even though these two activities are somewhat similar, they are very easy to recognize.

Figure 5. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while standing.

5.1.5. Walking Upstairs

Walking upstairs is an activity that, unlike the previous ones, can be done in many ways. It is
not that everyone walks or runs the same way, but with a few exceptions, the patterns they generate
are more or less alike. As far as walking upstairs goes, people do it step by step, two steps at a time,
some even three, slow, fast, or jumping, so recognizing it is not very straightforward.
From Figure 2 and Figure 6, similarities can be observed between walking and climbing stairs,
especially when comparing the results from the accelerometer and the gyroscope. This is partly due to
the fact that there are not many stairs that take as long as 10 s to climb (since generally, one would need
to spend a few seconds on the stairs, then walk on a flat surface, and so on). As described in Section 5.3,
this resemblance generates confusion and some false positives, and negatives showed up when trying
to distinguish and recognize these two activities.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 13 of 19

Figure 6. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while climbing stairs.

5.1.6. Walking Downstairs

Just like going upstairs, walking downstairs is more complicated to detect when trying to
differentiate it from other activities. Similarly to going upstairs, the patterns of going down the stairs
tend to vary. Just like going upstairs, this activity is easily confused with walking. However, the biggest
difficulty in recognizing both walking upstairs and downstairs is the fact that they are almost the same,
which can easily be observed from Figures 6 and 7, which means that the activity recognition struggled
to find out which one was actually performed.

Figure 7. Graphical data gathered from each sensor while going down the stairs.

5.2. Datasets’ Comparison

As previously mentioned, the proposed solution was tested using two datasets, an internal one
collected using our own Android application (presented in Section 4.1) and an external one [26].
The neural network was trained with each dataset, one at a time. As presented in Section 4.2,
the collected dataset contained 900 examples. After extracting features from the data in the internal
dataset, the total number of training examples was 15,750. For testing, the same five persons that
helped with the collection of the first set were involved. The evaluation of each dataset concluded
after 600 attempts, each action being performed one hundred times. The testing was done only with
newly-collected data, which did not exist in any of the training sets. The confusion matrices for the two
test suites are shown in Tables 3 and 4, respectively.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 14 of 19

Table 3. Confusion matrix for the internal training set.

Recognized Activity
Performed Activity
Walking Running Sitting Standing Upstairs Downstairs
Walking 93 1 0 1 3 2
Running 2 91 0 1 3 3
Sitting 1 0 94 3 1 1
Standing 2 1 2 93 1 1
Upstairs 8 2 1 4 75 10
Downstairs 7 2 2 6 12 71
Total 113 97 99 108 95 88

Table 4. Confusion matrix for the external training set.

Recognized Activity
Performed Activity
Walking Running Sitting Standing Upstairs Downstairs
Walking 85 4 0 2 6 3
Running 5 78 2 3 7 5
Sitting 2 2 87 6 2 1
Standing 5 1 4 84 4 2
Upstairs 12 4 1 5 65 13
Downstairs 9 3 2 6 18 62
Total 118 92 96 106 102 86

By analyzing the two confusion matrices, a considerable decrease from the internal to the external
dataset can be observed in the recognition of every activity, as shown in Tables 5 and 6. With an average
difference of 9.3% in favor of the internal dataset, the biggest discrepancy was found between the
results obtained for running recognition, the two cases showing a difference of 13%. This can be
attributed to the fact that the dataset proposed by our solution was collected in the same way and
circumstances as the training examples, so the noise that affected the data was far less pronounced in
this dataset than in the external one.

Table 5. Activity recognition accuracy over the internal dataset.

Activity Walking Running Sitting Standing Upstairs Downstairs Average

Accuracy 93% 91% 94% 93% 75% 71% 86.1%

Table 6. Activity recognition accuracy over the external dataset.

Activity Walking Running Sitting Standing Upstairs Downstairs Average

Accuracy 85% 78% 87% 84% 65% 62% 76.8%

5.3. Results Analysis

On the one hand, the results obtained when evaluating the proposed solution (as shown in Table 3)
with the collected dataset were satisfactory. If the activities that did not involve stairs were taken into
account, the average accuracy was above 92%. Walking upstairs and going down the stairs averaged
73% in accuracy, which although not a bad result, was not considered accurate enough, especially
since it was obtained on the more permissive dataset.
On the other hand, when tested against the external dataset, the correct recognition rate had
a significant decrease in accuracy. All of the tested activities suffered from noise, but the effect did
not vary too much over the six of them, so each activity was recognized at the same rate as the others.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 15 of 19

This means that, if sitting was the most accurately-recognized activity with the internal dataset, it remained
the same with the external one. The same can be said about the other activities as well. Even with these
issues, the results are encouraging, particularly for the activities that did not involve stairs. The only
one of these activities to reach an accuracy below 84% was running, with 78%. Instead, the accuracy for
stair ascending and descending was well below these values, averaging 63.5%. While the result is not
entirely satisfactory, it should be emphasized that the external dataset used different sensors than the ones
the proposed solution suggests, which may be responsible for this behavior.
A reason for the results obtained for the activities involving stairs could also be the environment
in which the data collection was performed. Given that the ten-second interval for the subsets of
recorded data was too long to go up or down one set of stairs only, during this process, flat zones found
between the stairs may have affected the data, making the activity easier to be mistaken for walking or
standing. Moreover, the lower scores of these activities are also owed to the fact that they were very
much alike and were easily confused. The confusion matrices showed that most false negatives were
triggered when walking upstairs and downstairs. In most cases, ascending stairs was confused with
descending stairs (11.5%) and the other way around (15%), but there were also enough cases when
these two activities were mistaken for walking (9%) or standing (5.2%). Concerning false positives,
climbing stairs was the dominant activity, being overfitted in 29% of the cases it had been detected.
Descending stairs and walking also rated high in this category, being equal at 23%. Another interesting
conclusion is that the three features that had the most impact on the accuracy of the results for the
internal dataset were average, absolute difference, and standard deviation, most likely because the
movements that we tracked could thus be clearly differentiated per axis.
We also performed a comparison of the accuracy obtained by our solution (on both the internal
and external datasets) and an external solution based on naive Bayes proposed by Shoaib et al. [14],
as seen in Table 7. In this solution, the authors used motion sensors (accelerometer and gyroscope)
placed on a person’s wrist or in his/her pocket and attempted to detect various activities while testing
on the external dataset mentioned in Section 4.1. The comparison results are presented in Table 8,
and it can be observed that our solution (Scenario 8) had the same overall accuracy as the external
implementation that used an accelerometer at the user’s wrist (Scenario 1); but we were able to better
detect walking (85% vs. 52%) and going up the stairs (65% vs. 48%). However, since the external
dataset contained some additional activities from the ones we were focusing on (such as biking, typing,
talking, smoking, etc.), there were some irrelevant data, as mentioned above. When looking at our
results for our internal dataset, we can observe that they were very similar to the ones obtained
by the external solution when using both an accelerometer, as well as a gyroscope (which were also
sensors that we employed). The advantage of our solution comes from the fact that it was able to
detect walking with a very good accuracy (93%, as opposed to 79% for the external solution), while
also improving upon the “going upstairs” action. Shoaib et al. also showed in their paper [14] that
using multiple sets of sensors yielded even better results (Scenario 3 in Table 8), while increasing the
data collection window tended to further improve the activity recognition accuracy. This is something
that we also wish to analyze for our solution in the future, and we are confident that we can obtain
even better results.
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 16 of 19

Table 7. Scenarios for activity recognition solutions’ comparison. The internal implementation refers to
the solution we proposed here (using MLP), while the external implementation refers to the solution
proposed by Shoaib et al. [14] that used naive Bayes. The external solution used a dataset defined
in the same paper, whereas we used first our own dataset (Scenario 7) and then the external dataset.

Scenario Description

1 External implementation, 5-s window, accelerometer at wrist

2 External implementation, 5-s window, accelerometer and gyroscope at wrist
3 External implementation, 5-s window, accelerometer and gyroscope at wrist and in pocket
4 External implementation, 2-s window, accelerometer and gyroscope at wrist
5 External implementation, 15-s window, accelerometer and gyroscope at wrist
6 External implementation, 30-s window, accelerometer and gyroscope at wrist
7 Internal implementation, 10-s window, smartphone sensors
8 Internal implementation and external dataset, 10-s window, smartphone sensors

Table 8. Accuracy comparison between our solution and an external solution [14].

Scenario Walking Running Sitting Standing Upstairs Downstairs Overall

1 52% 100% 93% 97% 48% 74% 77%
2 79% 100% 92% 96% 74% 93% 89%
3 85% 100% 91% 92% 96% 98% 94%
4 74% 100% 94% 96% 60% 81% 84%
5 92% 100% 89% 93% 93% 98% 94%
6 100% 100% 90% 93% 97% 100% 97%
7 93% 91% 94% 93% 75% 71% 86%
8 85% 78% 87% 84% 65% 62% 77%

6. Conclusions and Future Work

In this paper, we showed how human physical activity recognition can be achieved by using
sensors available on a smartphone. During this work, a new dataset was collected for the six
activities that made up the subject of this paper; relevant features have been extracted from the
gathered data; and results were obtained using a neural network. Evaluation of the results showed
that most of the activities were recognized correctly, four of them averaging an accuracy of 93%.
Even with the lower scores obtained for the other two activities, the accuracy did not drop under 86%.
These numbers suggest that using sensors to recognize user activity is becoming more and more reliable.
The proposed solution was also tested against an external standard dataset, the results showing a
slight decrease to 77%. However, the results may be affected because the external dataset contained
data from some different sensors. The paper was materialized through an Android application, easily
usable by any type of user, including older adults.
After achieving satisfactory results for activity recognition, we wish to take this one step further
and work on a way to make the proposed solution publicly available in a form that makes it easier to
be used for further research. In order to do so, a couple of actions have been planned. Because machine
learning algorithms, especially deep learning ones, use many system resources, running them
on a mobile device (even with the capabilities of the latest smartphones) is not a viable option.
Choosing large values for the depth of the network and the size of the training dataset can easily freeze
a device. Bearing this in mind, it is clear that doing all the computational part right on the device
is not the best solution. Therefore, in the near future, all this heavy processing is to be shifted to a
remote server. This way, the performance of the application should be improved visibly, which would
make real-time detection become more of a possibility than a probability. Furthermore, we would also
like to explore various alternatives to the currently-implemented perceptron classifier, such as genetic
algorithms [33,34].
Sensors 2019, 19, 458 17 of 19

Another goal is to improve activity recognition by adding additional activities like riding a bike,
driving, and falling. This would not only help the project cover much more of the user activity, but
also offer opportunities of developing new applications that use activity recognition. One example of
such an application (that we have begun working on) involves combining activity recognition with
user localization, with the purpose of tracking elderly people and receiving notifications whenever
their behavior is not the one expected (i.e., they go to an area of the city that they do not know; they
fall; they walk in strange patterns, etc.).

Author Contributions: Formal analysis, C.D., L.B., and R.-I.C.; funding acquisition, C.D.; investigation, R.-A.V.,
L.B., and R.-I.C.; methodology, C.D., L.B., and R.-I.C.; project administration, C.D.; software, R.-A.V.; supervision,
C.D. and R.-I.C.; validation, R.-A.V.; writing, original draft, R.-A.V.; writing, review and editing, L.B. and R.-I.C.
Funding: The research presented in this paper is supported by projects “vINCI: Clinically-validated
INtegrated Support for Assistive Care and Lifestyle Improvement: the Human Link” (EU AAL 2017) and
INTELLIT(Project Number PN-III-P1-1.2-PCCDI-2017-0821 / NR. 54PCCDI / 2018).
Acknowledgments: We acknowledge the support from Professor Fior Dafin Muresanu and the Foundation for
the Study of Nanoscience and Neuroregeneration, RoNeuro Institute—Center for Research and Diagnostic of
Neurologic Diseases. We would like to thank the reviewers for their time and expertise, constructive comments,
and valuable insight.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study;
in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; nor in the decision to publish
the results.

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