Assessing Performance of Aerobic Routines using Background Subtraction and Intersected Image Region

Abstract

It is recommended for a novice to engage a trained and experience person, i.e., a coach before starting an unfamiliar aerobic or weight routine. The coach's task is to provide real-time feedbacks to ensure that the routine is performed in a correct manner. This greatly reduces the risk of injury and maximise physical gains. We present a simple image similarity measure based on intersected image region to assess a subject's performance of an aerobic routine. The method is implemented inside an Augmented Reality (AR) desktop app that employs a single RGB camera to capture still images of the subject as he or she progresses through the routine. The background-subtracted body pose image is compared against the exemplar body pose image (i.e., AR template) at specific intervals. Based on a limited dataset, our pose matching function is reported to have an accuracy of 93.67%.