Energy Expenditure Estimation (EEE) is vital for maintaining weight, managing chronic diseases, achieving fitness goals, and improving overall health and well-being. Gold standard measurements for energy expenditure are expensive and time-consuming, hence limiting utility and adoption. Prior work has used wearable sensors for EEE as a workaround. Moreover, earables (ear-worn sensing devices such as earbuds) have recently emerged as a sub-category of wearables with unique characteristics (i.e., small form factor, high adoption) and positioning on the human body (i.e., robust to motion, high stability, facing thin skin), opening up a novel sensing opportunity. However, earables with multimodal sensors have rarely been used for EEE, with data collected in multiple activity types. Further, it is unknown how earable sensors perform compared to standard wearable sensors worn on other body positions. In this study, using a publicly available dataset gathered from 17 participants, we evaluate the EEE performance using multimodal sensors of earable devices to show that an MAE of 0.5 MET (RMSE = 0.67) can be achieved. Furthermore, we compare the EEE performance of three commercial wearable devices with the earable, demonstrating competitive performance of earables

翻译：能量消耗估计（EEE）对于维持体重、管理慢性疾病、实现健身目标以及改善整体健康与福祉至关重要。能量消耗的金标准测量方法成本高昂且耗时，从而限制了其实用性和普及度。先前的研究采用可穿戴传感器作为EEE的替代方案。此外，耳戴式设备（如耳机等耳部佩戴传感装置）近期作为可穿戴设备的一个子类崭露头角，其具有独特特征（即体积小、普及率高）及人体定位优势（即运动鲁棒性强、稳定性高、面向薄皮肤区域），开辟了新型传感可能性。然而，配备多模态传感器的耳戴式设备极少被用于涵盖多种活动类型的EEE研究。此外，与佩戴于其他身体部位的标准可穿戴传感器相比，耳戴式传感器的表现仍属未知。本研究利用公开数据集（包含17名参与者），通过耳戴式设备的多模态传感器评估EEE性能，结果显示可实现0.5 MET的MAE（RMSE=0.67）。进一步，我们将三种商用可穿戴设备与耳戴式设备的EEE性能进行对比，证明了耳戴式设备具有竞争力的表现。