Phoneless Step- and Breath-Adherent Auditory Breathing Guidance in Running via Smart Garments
Severin Bernhart, Eric Harbour, Harald Rieser (2025): Phoneless Step- and Breath-Adherent Auditory Breathing Guidance in Running via Smart Garments In: SportsHCI '25: Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Human-Computer Interaction and Sports.
Breathing guidance in running aims to be intuitive and minimally distracting to trigger rhythmic-controlled and exhalation-focused breathing, ultimately enhancing the running experience. A breathing guidance strategy is introduced that enriches existing auditory step-adherent approaches with breath-adherence by integrating required functionalities into a phoneless stride- and breathing-sensing garment. Locomotor-respiratory coupling-based breathing guidance is individually adapted to user-specific step and breath rates, and sonification is consciously triggered on and off depending on observed runners’ breathing regularity levels.
Extended exhalation phases are induced via unconscious auditory manipulation of runners’ natural exhalation. Custom chip design integrating edge-AI methods for feedback parameter generation, including AUX interfaces for signal transmission, enables zero-latency breathing guidance. Treadmill running demonstrates the potential for the breathing guidance concept, and an in-field participant study evaluation is pending for more thorough system validation.
