Sensor-based fitness tracking platform for wearables

As use of mobile fitness applications increases, so does the expectation of battery efficiency and accuracy enabling users to get full credit for their exercise sessions. Most fitness apps use GNSS (such as GPS) to track the speed, distance and route of activity. However, on forest running trails or in deep urban canyon environments, GNSS can be inaccurate or unavailable, resulting in lost or inaccurate fitness data.

The Coursa Sports SDK uses advanced algorithms that take sensor data from the mobile device gyroscope, accelerometer, and barometric pressure sensor to generate an inertial tracking data flow that is combined with GNSS data. The addition of the inertial tracking system, together with GNSS, improves customer experience by increasing the continuity and accuracy of the fitness data when GNSS signals are weak or unavailable.

Coursa Sports improves mobile device battery life by up to 50% during workouts by frequently turning GNSS off (duty-cycling). During duty-cycling, the lower power sensors are used to track fitness data at the same accuracy as GNSS. This feature extends battery life during fitness tracking, and enables developers to migrate their smartphone apps to smartwatch devices, where smaller batteries and the high power consumption of GNSS previously prohibited fitness tracking use cases.

"InvenSense has made significant investments in human context and location tracking algorithm development to serve our OEM customers," said Eitan Medina, Vice President Marketing and Product Management, InvenSense. "Now, for the first time, we are enabling application developers to take advantage of these technology advances in their apps. Coursa Sports is the first commercially available SDK and SaaS platform designed to help fitness and health application developers provide more accurate and reliable fitness metrics to their customers through the use of MEMS inertial sensor data."