Temporal convolutional networks predict dynamic oxygen uptake response from wearable sensors across exercise intensities

Oxygen consumption ([Formula: see text]) provides established clinical and physiological indicators of cardiorespiratory function and exercise capacity. However, [Formula: see text] monitoring is largely limited to specialized laboratory settings, making its widespread monitoring elusive. Here we investigate temporal prediction of [Formula: see text] from wearable sensors during cycle ergometer exercise using a temporal convolutional network (TCN). Cardiorespiratory signals were acquired from a smart shirt with integrated textile sensors alongside ground-truth [Formula: see text] from a metabolic system on 22 young healthy adults. Participants performed one ramp-incremental and three pseudorandom binary sequence exercise protocols to assess a range of [Formula: see text] dynamics. A TCN model was developed using causal convolutions across an effective history length to model the time-dependent nature of [Formula: see text]. Optimal history length was determined through minimum validation loss across hyperparameter values. The best performing model encoded 218 s history length (TCN-VO2 A), with 187, 97, and 76 s yielding <3% deviation from the optimal validation loss. TCN-VO2 A showed strong prediction accuracy (mean, 95% CI) across all exercise intensities (-22 ml min^-1, [-262, 218]), spanning transitions from low-moderate (-23 ml min^-1, [-250, 204]), low-high (14 ml min^-1, [-252, 280]), ventilatory threshold-high (-49 ml min^-1, [-274, 176]), and maximal (-32 ml min^-1, [-261, 197]) exercise. Second-by-second classification of physical activity across 16,090 s of predicted [Formula: see text] was able to discern between vigorous, moderate, and light activity with high accuracy (94.1%). This system enables quantitative aerobic activity monitoring in non-laboratory settings, when combined with tidal volume and heart rate reserve calibration, across a range of exercise intensities using wearable sensors for monitoring exercise prescription adherence and personal fitness.