From Lab to Wrist: Bridging Metabolic Monitoring and Consumer Wearables for Heart Rate and Oxygen Consumption Modeling

Understanding physiological responses during running is critical for performance optimization, tailored training prescriptions, and athlete health management. We introduce a comprehensive framework -- what we believe to be the first capable of predicting instantaneous oxygen consumption (VO$_{2}$) trajectories exclusively from consumer-grade wearable data. Our approach employs two complementary physiological models: (1) accurate modeling of heart rate (HR) dynamics via a physiologically constrained ordinary differential equation (ODE) and neural Kalman filter, trained on over 3 million HR observations, achieving 1-second interval predictions with mean absolute errors as low as 2.81\,bpm (correlation 0.87); and (2) leveraging the principles of precise HR modeling, a novel VO$_{2}$ prediction architecture requiring only the initial second of VO$_{2}$ data for calibration, enabling robust, sequence-to-sequence metabolic demand estimation. Despite relying solely on smartwatch and chest-strap data, our method achieves mean absolute percentage errors of approximately 13\%, effectively capturing rapid physiological transitions and steady-state conditions across diverse running intensities. Our synchronized dataset, complemented by blood lactate measurements, further lays the foundation for future noninvasive metabolic zone identification. By embedding physiological constraints within modern machine learning, this framework democratizes advanced metabolic monitoring, bridging laboratory-grade accuracy and everyday accessibility, thus empowering both elite athletes and recreational fitness enthusiasts.

Automatic Identification and Visualization of Group Training Activities Using Wearable Data

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) identifies daily activities from time-series data collected by wearable devices like smartwatches. Recent advancements in Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and low-cost sensors have broadened HAR applications across fields like healthcare, biometrics, sports, and personal fitness. However, challenges remain in efficiently processing the vast amounts of data generated by these devices and developing models that can accurately recognize a wide range of activities from continuous recordings, without relying on predefined activity training sessions. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for imputing, analyzing, and identifying activities from wearable data, specifically targeting group training scenarios without explicit activity sessions. Our approach is based on data collected from 135 soldiers wearing Garmin 55 smartwatches over six months. The framework integrates multiple data streams, handles missing data through cross-domain statistical methods, and identifies activities with high accuracy using machine learning (ML). Additionally, we utilized statistical analysis techniques to evaluate the performance of each individual within the group, providing valuable insights into their respective positions in the group in an easy-to-understand visualization. These visualizations facilitate easy understanding of performance metrics, enhancing group interactions and informing individualized training programs. We evaluate our framework through traditional train-test splits and out-of-sample scenarios, focusing on the model's generalization capabilities. Additionally, we address sleep data imputation without relying on ML, improving recovery analysis. Our findings demonstrate the potential of wearable data for accurately identifying group activities, paving the way for intelligent, data-driven training solutions.