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BreatheBuddy: Tracking Real-time Breathing Exercises for Automated Biofeedback Using Commodity Earbuds

Published: 20 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Breathing exercises reduce stress and improve overall mental well-being. There are various types of breathing exercises. Performing the exercises correctly may give the best outcome and doing it in wrong ways can sometimes have adverse effect. Providing real-time biofeedback can greatly improve the user experience in doing the right exercises in the right ways. In this paper, we present methods to passively track breathing biomarkers in real-time using wireless commodity earbuds and generate feedback on users' breathing performance. We use the earbud's low-power accelerometer to generate a comprehensive set of breathing biomarkers including breathing phase, breathing rate, depth of breathing, and breathing symmetry. We have conducted studies where the subjects performed different types of guided breathing exercises while wearing the earbuds. Our algorithms detect breathing phases with 90.91% F1-score and estimate breathing rate with 95.05% accuracy. We further show that our algorithms can be used to generate biofeedback towards designing engaging smartphone's user interactions that facilitate users to accurately perform various breathing exercises.

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    cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 6, Issue MHCI
    MHCI
    September 2022
    852 pages
    EISSN:2573-0142
    DOI:10.1145/3564624
    Issue’s Table of Contents
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    Publication History

    Published: 20 September 2022
    Published in PACMHCI Volume 6, Issue MHCI

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    Author Tags

    1. breathing bio-feedback
    2. earbuds
    3. guided breathing
    4. mental well-being

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