TripleBeat

TripleBeat extended MPTrain, a mobile phone-based personal trainer that used physiological signals and music to guide a workout. The new prototype added competition against a previous performance or another runner, while retaining real-time heart-rate monitoring and music selection.

Features

  1. Training proposals: Based on the user's high-level goals (e.g., fat loss, cardiovascular improvement), TripleBeat selects the appropriate training zone.
  2. Competition: Users can virtually compete against their past performances or with partners, following the proposed workout as closely as possible.
  3. Audio feedback: Songs are selected from the smartphone's library based on musical features that encourage the user to speed up, slow down, or maintain pace.
  4. Visual feedback: A green screen indicates the user's heart rate is within the target training zone; red indicates adjustment is needed. Additional data displayed includes calories burned, workout duration, current song, and competition standing.

Hardware

TripleBeat uses the AliveTec chestband (with ECG, accelerometer, and Bluetooth sensors) paired with a smartphone.

Evidence and scope

The publications below document MPTrain, automatic playlist generation, and the user study behind the music-and-physiology approach. They do not report a separate evaluation of TripleBeat's competition feature. The project therefore demonstrates how that feature was designed and presented, but does not establish its independent effect on exercise performance.

Research underpinning TripleBeat

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

Press