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User interface and methods of using in exercise equipmentUser interface and methods of using in exercise equipment description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20090098980, User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
This application claims priority to and incorporates by reference in its entirety U.S. Patent Provisional Application No. 60/895,676 filed Mar. 19, 2007. This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/078,913 filed Mar. 9, 2005 that in turn claims priority to U.S. Patent Provisional Application No. 60/551,366 filed Mar. 9, 2004. All above applications are incorporated by reference in their entirety. The invention relates generally to graphically based interfaces. The average user\'s usage of exercise equipment, especially cardio workout equipment involving running or similar activities lessens with time. Exercise equipment is designed by sports physiologists with a penchant for displaying alphanumeric physiologic parameters in view of the exercising user. Some of the displays are augmented by peak activity bar charts and caloric burn rates. After a short while, the user\'s interest in these alphanumeric and chart plots lessens and interest in exercising soon tapers off. The decline in exercise equipment use is related to the boredom that soon sets in from the inherent repetitious aspect of treadmills, stationary bikes, elliptical trainers, and other cardio related equipment and the commonness presented by the data and plot displays. Exercise equipment users try their best in alleviating boredom, for example listening to portable music devices or watch a nearby wall mounted television with limited success. Currently people are forced to exercise indoors on fitness equipment without any interactivity, resulting in a boring experience that requires significant willpower to start and continue, resulting in considerable lack of motivation to keeping in shape, much less form healthy exercise habits. In the particular embodiment, the problem is solved by turning exercising on a piece of fitness equipment into an interactive, exciting, and motivating video game experience. Another existing problem is active or fitness games have yet to penetrate the home in any significant degree. While an arcade game can be successful enough to support a proprietary solution, no single game, or even small set of games, is sufficient to motivate the consumer to make a substantial hardware purchase. Industry-wide support must be shown before most consumers can adopt a platform. The current market solutions are inadequate. Proprietary solutions generally target niche markets and may consist of a proprietary hardware device, such as a bicycle or treadmill, an interface, and some proprietary software that runs the application; the user is required to supply the platform, usually a personal computer (PC). These solutions are closed, meaning there is absolutely no support for their devices other than from a few choice partners, and their costs force pricing high far above the mass-market. Other approaches rely on the use of existing games that do not work off-the-shelf as fitness games. Further, because the devices do not provide a way to equally compare the effort put forth by two competitors, these devices cannot be used for head-to-head competition or even friendly training. In prior devices, there is no feedback from the device, so they cannot be used for interactive games or competitive events, and the settings of speed and incline or resistance are absolute, not relative, which means that a given workout is only good for someone within a narrow fitness range. Someone more fit than that range will find the workout too easy, for someone less fit the workout is too hard. In societies afflicted with obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and other diseases or conditions associated with or exacerbated by a sedentary lifestyle, overcoming the boredom effect inherent in cardio workout equipment so that usage levels and frequency is restored to reach and surpass health maintenance levels reflects a goal worthy to achieve. An application programmable interface (API) configured to present a selection of video games having interactive gaming content responsive to a variety of physical motion of the exercise equipment that is powered by the equipment user and designed to encourage ongoing participation by the user in various physical activity scenarios. The API is configured to merge exercise equipment with video gaming that is interoperatively compatible across multiple exerciser hardware configurations, across multiple gaming system equipment configurations, and across independent display monitors. Gaming content is designed to interactively encourage continued and varying exercising by associating the motions of the exercise equipment with changes in audio visual content presented on the monitor or by other gaming system configurations. The API serves to configure fitness equipment to be generically interactive and interfaceable with arcade like games. The generic interactivity includes compatibility with multiple motion types generated by a user. For example, a rear-wheel trainer is coupled with a bicycle and interfaced to a personal computer (PC). The fitness equipment interaction happens in concert between the fitness hardware and a host device, e.g., a PC, game console, or other hardware and/or software device or system capable of implementing an interactive application. Alternative embodiments include the API configuring other physical exercise equipment with an arcade game like experience, including a stair machine, a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, a rotary climbing wall, grasping activities, pulling, pushing, and other specially designed fitness equipment. Particular and alternative embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawings: Continue reading about User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment... Full patent description for User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. Start now! - Receive info on patent apps like User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment or other areas of interest. ### Previous Patent Application: Encouraging exercise whilst playing electronic games Next Patent Application: Virtual trainer Industry Class: Exercise devices ### FreshPatents.com Support Thank you for viewing the User interface and methods of using in exercise equipment patent info. IP-related news and info Results in 2.2502 seconds Other interesting Feshpatents.com categories: Software: Finance , AI , Databases , Development , Document , Navigation , Error paws |
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