Providing Cadence Feedback in Real-Time to Guide Cardiovascular Workouts

Cardiovascular workouts offer numerous health benefits, yet beginners often find it challenging to initiate them. Existing wearable technologies, although providing valuable feedback such as heart rate zones, often disrupt the workout flow and distract users due to the need for interaction with the wearable display. In response, we propose an alternative feedback mechanism: cadence, measured in steps per minute. This feedback mechanism uses multiplicative control to produce the correct cadence for the user's target heart rate. To model the heart rate and cadence relationship, a first-order system was used. The prototype implementation of this system was completed in Arduino, using a force sensitive resistor to measure the user's cadence and a POLAR heart rate strap to measure the user's heart rate. The cadence is updated every 10 seconds to allow the user to sync to the cadence metronome provided by attached earbuds. This proposed system has shown promising experimental results for both moderate-intensity and high-intensity workouts, skipping the transition zone between them. This allows the user to avoid awkward workout intensities between a fast walk and a jog.