MPTrain: A Mobile, Physiology and Music-Based Personal Trainer on your Mobile Phone

System

MPTrain was a wearable personal trainer built around a target heart-rate curve. An AliveTec chestband sent ECG and accelerometer data over Bluetooth to a smartphone, where the software estimated heart rate and pace. It then selected music from the user's library to encourage a faster, slower, or steady pace as the measured workout diverged from the target.

The related PAPA work addressed playlist generation: song choice depended on the exercise purpose and the user's current physiological state rather than on a fixed sequence prepared before the run.

MPTrain hardware: AliveTec chestband with ECG, accelerometer, and Bluetooth; Audiovox smartphone.

MPTrain data flow diagram.

See also the successor system: TripleBeat.

Runner study

A nine-week study compared MPTrain with silent, randomly selected music, and metronome conditions. Twenty-three regular runners completed three or four 42-minute sessions. The study reported that adaptive music helped runners follow the prescribed workout more closely and improved enjoyment and perceived efficacy relative to the comparison conditions.

The study involved a small group of regular runners and short, structured sessions. It did not test long-term adherence, people new to exercise, or clinical outcomes; its findings concern performance and experience during the evaluated workouts.

Publications and patent

Conference paper
DOI
Cite
Formatted citation

Nuria Oliver, Fernando Flores-Mangas (2006). MPTrain: A Mobile, Music and Physiology Based Personal Trainer. Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2006), 21-28. https://doi.org/10.1145/1152215.1152221

BibTeX
@inproceedings{oliver2006mptrain,
  author = {Nuria Oliver and Fernando Flores-Mangas},
  title = {{MPTrain}: A Mobile, Music and Physiology Based Personal Trainer},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2006)},
  pages = {21--28},
  year = 2006,
  doi = {10.1145/1152215.1152221},
  award = {Best Paper Award Nominee},
  cites = 234,
  citesdate = {2026-03-23}
}
★ Best Paper Award Nominee

MPTrain: A Mobile, Music and Physiology Based Personal Trainer

Nuria Oliver, Fernando Flores-Mangas
Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2006) · 2006
Conference paper
DOI
Cite
Formatted citation

Nuria Oliver, Lucas Kreger-Stickles (2006). PAPA: Physiology and Purpose-Aware Automatic Playlist Generation. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2006). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1416794

BibTeX
@inproceedings{oliver2006papa,
  author = {Nuria Oliver and Lucas Kreger-Stickles},
  title = {{PAPA}: Physiology and Purpose-Aware Automatic Playlist Generation},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2006)},
  year = 2006,
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1416794}
}

PAPA: Physiology and Purpose-Aware Automatic Playlist Generation

Nuria Oliver, Lucas Kreger-Stickles
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2006) · 2006
Conference paper
DOI
Cite
Formatted citation

Nuria Oliver, Laura Kreger-Stickles (2006). Enhancing exercise performance through real-time physiological monitoring and music: a user study. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (Pervasive Health), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1109/pcthealth.2006.361660

BibTeX
@inproceedings{oliver2006enhancing,
  author = {Oliver, Nuria and Kreger-Stickles, Laura},
  title = {Enhancing exercise performance through real-time physiological monitoring and music: a user study},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (Pervasive Health)},
  year = 2006,
  pages = {1--10},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1109/pcthealth.2006.361660},
  cites = 26,
  citesdate = {2026-03-23}
}

Enhancing exercise performance through real-time physiological monitoring and music: a user study

Nuria Oliver, Laura Kreger-Stickles
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (Pervasive Health) · 2006
Patent
Cite
Formatted citation

Nuria Oliver, Fernando Flores-Mangas (2007). Algorithms for computing heart-rate and movement speed of a user from sensor data.

BibTeX
@patent{oliver2007heartrate,
  author = {Oliver, Nuria and Flores-Mangas, Fernando},
  title = {Algorithms for computing heart-rate and movement speed of a user from sensor data},
  number = {11/407645},
  type = {patentus},
  year = 2007,
  note = {Priority 2005-11-23, Filed 2006-04-20, Published 2007-05-24},
  cites = 232
}

Algorithms for computing heart-rate and movement speed of a user from sensor data

Nuria Oliver, Fernando Flores-Mangas
2007

Presentation

Videos