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Treadmill having exercise motivation inducing function

Treadmill having exercise motivation inducing function description/claims

This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2007-0015701, filed Feb. 15, 2007, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

1. Technical Field

The present invention relates to a treadmill inducing a positive attitude on exercise to a user who does not like exercise, by motivating the user to receive a predetermined gift when (s)he finishes exercise, and more particularly, to a treadmill having an exercise motivation inducing function, which comprises an interface to control the degree of difficulty of exercise, a driving unit to be driven by the degree of difficulty controlled by the interface, and a control unit to control a gift provider to differentially provide a gift according to the degree of difficulty controlled by the interface.

2. Discussion of Related Art

It has been reported that Korean people have very increasingly died from high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease by the hardening of the arteries (myocardial infarction), breast cancer and colon cancer. From this report, it is noted that the pattern of diseases has changed to those of advanced countries. The change in the pattern of disease is related to the tendency that an overweight population is sharply increasing as the standard of living is improved. It is not too much to say that the change in the pattern of disease is also related to lack of exercise for a long time due to the development of modern conveniences.

Further, the Korean overweight population (about 20%) is not serious compared to the western advanced countries. However, many Korean young ladies tend to excessively reduce their weight for appearance not for health and, taking advantage of such a tendency, unscientific methods which are likely to injure health have prevailed in the indifference of experts. Thus, these tendencies have become serous threats to national health. Further, the people of abdominal region fatness, which is known as a major dangerous factor of diabetes, heart disease and the like, have gradually increased, and the number of overweight children has also sharply increased. In view of these tendencies, there is a high possibility that obesity may be a major health problem of the nation in the future.

Most desirably, obesity which injures the health of modern people should be solved by exercise. However, people would neglect exercise by the reasons that exercise is hard and effects of exercise slowly progress despite of the hardness of the exercise. Therefore, the present applicant has tried to find an apparatus making it interesting to exercise.

Therefore, the present invention is directed to provide a treadmill having an exercise motivation inducing function by adding the fun of exercise to provide a reward for the extent of everyday exercise to a number of overweight patients, to solve obesity in the long term.

In accordance with an exemplary embodiment, the present invention provides to a treadmill having an exercise motivation inducing function, which comprises: an interface to control the degree of difficulty of exercise; a driving unit to be driven by the degree of difficulty controlled by the interface; and a control unit to control a gift provider to differentially provide a gift according to the degree of difficulty controlled by the interface.

Preferably, the driving unit may comprise: guide frames positioned at both lower sides of the treadmill; a belt positioned between the guide frames and rotated by a driven roller and a driving roller, along a caterpillar tread; a power unit to apply power to the driving roller; an angle controller to vary a vertical position of one side of the guide frame; a fixation frame securely interposed within the belt so as not to interfere the rotation of the driving roller and driven roller, so that both sides of the fixation frame are fixed in the guide frames; and a pressure sensor positioned on the fixation frame, to sense pressure.

Preferably, the degree of difficulty may be determined, by independently setting the rotation speed, number of rotation times, driving time, angle control of the driving unit or by setting a combination thereof.

Preferably, the gift provider may comprise a touch or non-touch type card terminal, and the gift may be provided when reaching a set value of the degree of difficulty by the interface.

The above and other features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art by describing in detail preferred embodiments thereof with reference to the attached drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a front view of a treadmill having an exercise motivation inducing function according to an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a side view of the treadmill; and

FIG. 3 is a schematic flow chart of a control unit of the treadmill.

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