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Generation of user activity feedback

Generation of user activity feedback description/claims

The invention relates to generation of user activity feedback and in particular, but not exclusively, to generation of feedback for exercise and sporting user activities.

Recent decades have seen an explosive growth the volume and types of personal activities, such as sports, leisure and entertainment activities performed by people. Furthermore, a significant improvement has been made in manufacturing, computing and communication technologies resulting in an increasing number of electronic devices and equipment for monitoring user responses and supporting or enhancing user activities.

For example, in the area of health monitoring electronic devices capable of monitoring a user's physiognomic response during exercise activities have been introduced. E.g. in the health care sector there is a growing amount of real-time wearable systems for monitoring, visualizing and analyzing physiognomic signals.

Specifically, exercise computers have been developed which are capable of receiving signals from a heart rate sensor in order to monitor and assess the user's performance. As another example, computers have been developed which can receive input from a pedometer sensor in order to calculate various characteristics of the performed exercise, such as the distance covered or an average speed of the user during the exercise.

However, existing systems tend to be limited and provide only a very limited feedback on the user activity. Typically, the feedback information is restricted to relatively simple measures such as a heart rate, speed, or duration of the exercise.

Accordingly, an improved system for providing user activity feedback would be advantageous and in particular a system allowing increased flexibility, additional feedback information and/or improved user activity feedback would be advantageous.

Accordingly, the Invention seeks to preferably mitigate, alleviate or eliminate one or more of the above mentioned disadvantages singly or in any combination.

According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided an arrangement for generating a user activity feedback, the arrangement comprising: a sensor device comprising: a force sensor for determining a measured force distribution resulting from a user activity, and means for transmitting the measured force distribution to a user device; and

the user device comprising: means for receiving the measured force distribution, context means for providing context data for the user, target means for determining a target force distribution for the user activity in response to the context data, and feedback means for generating the user activity feedback in response to the measured force distribution and the target force distribution.

The invention may allow an improved user activity feedback to be generated. For example, more accurate user activity feedback or enhanced or additional user activity feedback may be generated. Specifically, the arrangement may generate feedback data which not only reflects how a user performs during the user activity but also how the user preferably should perform in the specific circumstances of the user activity. The arrangement may for example generate feedback data suggesting improvements and corrections to the user. The arrangement may for example provide an automated coaching experience for a user performing a sports activity. Thus, the user activity feedback may be exercise or sporting performance indication data.

The user activity feedback may be any data relating to the user activity which depends on the user's actions during the activity. The measured force distribution may be a temporal and/or spatial force distribution. For example, the force distribution may reflect the temporal and/or spatial force variation exerted by one or more of the user's limbs during the user activity. For example, the force distribution may reflect the pressure exerted by one or both of the users feet during the activity. The measured force distribution may include a directly or indirectly measured distribution of e.g. pressures, torques and/or turns.

According to an optional feature of the invention, the user device is a personal communication device. The user device may specifically be a cellular mobile telephone. Thus, the invention may allow the functionality of a personal communication device, which is typically always carried by a user, to be reused to provide an additional user experience and service to the user. Furthermore, existing communication capabilities of the personal communication device may be used to communicate with the sensor device. In addition, the communication capabilities of the personal communication device can be used to enhance the user experience for example by exchanging user activity feedback data, measured force distribution data, target force distribution data and/or context data with other communication devices. In particular, the personal communication device may be used to provide group based user activity feedback.

According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of generating user activity feedback, the method comprising: a sensor device performing the steps of: determining a measured force distribution resulting from a user activity, and transmitting the measured force distribution to a user device; and a user device performing the steps of: receiving the measured force distribution, providing context data for the user, determining a target force distribution for the user activity in response to the context data, and generating the user activity feedback in response to the measured force distribution and the target force distribution.

These and other aspects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from and elucidated with reference to the embodiment(s) described hereinafter.

Embodiments of the invention will be described, by way of example only, with reference to the drawings, in which

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of an apparatus for generating a user activity feedback in accordance with some embodiments of the invention; and

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