Automatic characterization of ambulatory patterns of utilitarian and leisure trips

In the health self-management services it is beneficial to identify and address the already existing healthy activity patterns of the user. Some of these healthy activity patterns might be of a utilitarian nature, e.g. commuting to work by bike or on foot, or might be for leisure, like taking a walk in a park. In this paper we discuss one possibility to detect the utilitarian or leisure nature of a particular ambulatory path based on the geometry of the trajectory. In essence, a leisure trip is more commonly a round-trip while an utilitarian A-to-B trips follow the single shortest path between A and B. We define a generic measure for the characterization of utilitarian and leisure paths based on GPS location data and develop an algorithm for approaching the same based on only magnetometer data from a wearable device.