Closed-loop power dissipation control for cardio-fitness equipment

This application claims priority to U.S. Utility patent application Ser. No. 11/766,312, filed Jun. 21, 2007, and entitled “Closed-Loop Power Dissipation Control For Cardio-Fitness Equipment and to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/817,657, filed Jun. 28, 2006, and entitled “Closed-Loop Power Dissipation Control For Cardio-Fitness Equipment,” by John Fisher et al., and are hereby incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to and cross-references U.S. application Ser. No. 11/433,778, filed May 11, 2006, and entitled “Cardio-Fitness Station With Virtual-Reality Capability,” by John Fisher et al., the contents of which application are hereby incorporated by reference.

1. Field of Invention

This invention relates to stationary exercise equipment and power dissipation control used by such equipment. More specifically, the invention relates to closed-loop power dissipation control for cardio-fitness equipment.

2. Background of the Invention

A major sports equipment industry has developed over the last decades round providing fitness equipment for home and indoors exercises based on so-called stationary exercise equipments, which can be but are not limited to stationary exercise bicycles, in which the action of pedaling is used to dissipate power by the person (rider) exercising. The resistance to pedal rotation is allowed for power dissipation, which is an integral part of the exercise. State of the art exercise equipments often feature heart-rate monitoring, entertainment, and a varying degree of pedaling resistance, which is used to control the amount of power the rider dissipates while pedaling.

On many stationary exercise equipments, the power necessary to pedal can be set directly to a predetermined level by the rider, yet on some, the power can be set in terms of real-world parameters, such as slope of a hill, to give the rider the impression that he or she is riding a real bicycle up a hill. Cardio-fitness stations, the most advanced exercise tools, offer virtual reality capabilities in which the rider interacts with a virtual environment shown on a video monitor and experiences a virtual bicycle ride through a predetermined landscape with hills, valleys, and road obstacles. Such feature has given rise to competition between riders exercising on two cardio-fitness stations, i.e., the riders can operate separate cardio-fitness stations to ride jointly in a race through the same predetermined virtual landscape. Furthermore, with the advance of exercise equipments, many riders have increased their demands for accurate monitoring of their performance and performance history.

A fact not immediately apparent to an average rider of stationary equipments is that their performance, i.e., the resistance to pedal these cardio-fitness stations under a specified setting or virtual terrain slope, is not always consistent among the stations. This is noticeable when one rider is racing another rider riding another unit and the other rider may have an easier time making it to the finish line. Furthermore, for a given constant cadence and same resistance setting, stationary equipment will deliver pedal resistance that depends on the history of the cadence and torque in a practically unpredictable manner due to the cumulative effect of machine temperature and wear.

All these problems arise from the fact that pedal-rotation-resistance mechanism implemented in present-day exercise equipments is not intended for such precise setting and repeatability of pedal torque, which has been the choice of the manufacturers for cost reasons and the fact that it was not required by the riders. The source of the drift and unit-to-unit variation in the relationship between the setting of pedal resistance and the actual value of resistance experienced by the rider comes from the drift in the performance of mechanical and electrical elements, for non-limiting examples, manufacturing tolerance, mechanical wear, and heating effects on the equipment. Such variation ultimately yields unsatisfactory accuracy of power dissipation and an incorrect assessment of total amount of work that rider has performed during his or her exercise session, which makes it next to impossible to execute a fair race between riders on two separate cardio-fitness stations.

One embodiment of the present invention provides an inexpensive apparatus enabling measurement of power dissipated by the rider of a cardiofitness station (or any other stationary exercise equipment) that does not depend on the manufacturer, manufacturing tolerances, or machine condition. In addition, a method of using the data measured by such an apparatus to improve the quality of the exercise experience is provided.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention is illustrated by way of example in the accompanying drawings. The drawings should be understood as illustrative rather than limiting.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary cardio-fitness station with virtual-reality capability in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary cardio-fitness station in block diagram form in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary pedal assembly function diagram in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

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