Patent Application
20170209743
This application claims priority to European Patent Application No. 16152235.4, filed Jan. 21, 2016, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The invention relates generally to a system and a method for linking oscillating movements of an exercise equipment to a user of the exercise equipment in a database.
The market for connected devices, e.g. internet of things, is increasing. The areas of use are continuously developing. Connected devices may facilitate automation of activities that previously were done manually by a person. One such activity that may be automated is the activity of registering training activities of a person. For example, a smart phone with a suitable application may be used for measuring e.g. distance and speed of a running workout, and storing such data for later retrieval.
In a gym environment or similar, such automatic registration of exercise activities requires knowledge of which user is using which exercise equipment. One solution is to employ a log on system where the user logs on to the exercise equipment that he/she is using and then logs of when he/she has finished the exercise. However, this may be difficult for a user to remember while exercising. An alternative solution would thus be beneficial.
In view of the above, an objective of the invention is to solve or at least reduce one or several of the drawbacks discussed above. Generally, the above objective is achieved by the attached independent patent claims.
According to a first aspect, the present invention is realized by a system for linking oscillating movements of an exercise equipment having a equipment ID to a user of the exercise equipment in a database, the system comprising:
By the term “oscillating movements” should, in the context of present specification, be understood a repeating movement or a periodic motion, back and forth over a range of positions. Such a movement may for example be when the user is stretching and retracting his arms over his head, e.g. when doing a shoulder press exercise with a dumbbell.
By calculating a correlation between an oscillating movement of a first device attached to a user, and an oscillating movement of a second device attached to an exercise equipment (e.g. attached to a part of an exercise machine such as a rowing machine, to a dumbbell or to a barbell), the oscillating movement of the exercise equipment may be linked to the user wearing the first device. Consequently, the repetitions performed by the user on the exercise equipment may be registered to the user in a database. The training activities of the user may thus be automatically registered, and the user may focus on the training instead remember to manually print down and log each exercise. Moreover, with the present system, the user does not need to log on to the equipment that he/she intends to use.
In a second aspect, the present invention provides a method for linking oscillating movements of an exercise equipment to a user of the exercise equipment in a database, the method being performed in a system comprising a first device adapted to be attached to a user and comprising a user ID, a second device adapted to be attached to the exercise equipment and comprising an equipment ID of the exercise equipment, and a third device connected to the database, the method comprising the steps of:
The second aspect may generally have the same features and advantages as the first aspect.
Other objectives, features and advantages of the present invention will appear from the following detailed disclosure, from the attached dependent claims as well as from the drawings.
Generally, all terms used in the claims are to be interpreted according to their ordinary meaning in the technical field, unless explicitly defined otherwise herein. All references to “a/an/the [element, device, component, means, step, etc]” are to be interpreted openly as referring to at least one instance of the element, device, component, means, step, etc., unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Examples of embodiments herein are described in more detail with reference to attached drawings where the same reference numerals will be used for similar elements, wherein:
The first 102a-b and second devices 112a-b are both arranged for extracting data pertaining to an oscillating movement of the respective device. The devices 102a-b, 112a-b may for example comprise accelerometers, or gyroscopes. This will be further described below.
The device 102 may further comprise a battery 206 for powering the device. According to some embodiments, it is important that the second device 112 (arranged to be attached to the exercise equipment) has a low power consumption, e.g. such that the battery can last for more than a year. This reduces the need of recharging/replacing the battery. In order to achieve this, the sensor 202 of the second device 112 may be arranged to have a first and a second state. The first state may be a low energy state where the sensor 202 is running at the lowest possible power and only arranged to detect a movement exceeding a threshold. When such a movement is detected, the sensor 202 may in response thereto configure itself in a second state in which the sensor 202 is arranged for measuring movements of the second device 202 and for producing movement data pertaining to the measured movements. Using this setup, the sensor may run at 10 microAmps when being in its first state, which with a 1000 mAh battery means 100 000 hours of battery time when the device is only in the first state. The battery time will obviously decrease when the sensor is in the second state, but generally, an exercise equipment is only used for a minor part of the day, and not used at all during the night. In some embodiments, when the sensor 202 has not detected any movement for a threshold amount of time, the sensor 202 will configure itself in the first state again.
Such a setup may not be needed in the first device 102 since this device generally may be recharged after each workout session and the battery 206 of the first device 102 thus only need to last for e.g. 3 hours. Of course, in order to reduce the need of recharging, also the sensor 202 of the first device 102 may be arranged as described above with a first and second state.
The device 102, 112 may further comprise a microcontroller or microcontroller unit (MCU) 208 arranged for receiving the movement data from the sensor 202, and for extracting data pertaining to the oscillating movement of the device 102, 112. This data may then be transmitted from the device 102, 112 by using a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio 204. Other ways of transmitting the data are equally possible such as regular Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Cellular data service such as 3g/4g etc. It is also possible that the devices 112 attached to the exercise equipment transmit the data via a wired connection, especially if they are attached to an exercise machine which generally is not moved around in a gym environment.
The data transmitted from the BLE radio (or similar) 204 of the devices 102, 112 are then received by a third device 402 which is connected to a database 404. An example of this setup is shown in
The first device 102a-b may for example be a smart phone, or a smart watch. The first device may according to some embodiments comprise an NFC-reader for configuring the first device with a user ID.
The second device 112a-b may be based on any type of data chip comprising the required features, and to which a sensor for measuring movements of the second device and for producing movement data pertaining to the measured movements can be connected. The data chip should also be easily connected to a power source, e.g. a battery. The chip should e.g. be suited for Bluetooth low energy and ultra low-power wireless applications and be built around a CPU with a flash memory and/or RAM memory for improved application performance. The chip should comprise a transmitter/transceiver which may support both BLE and/or Wi-Fi. Such a design may also be used for the first device 102a-b.
The calculation of correlation performed by the third device may be carried out by a processor of the third device running software for calculating a correlation between two data sets.
In the embodiment shown in
The fourth devices 502a-b may thus be used for retransmitting the data received from the first and second devices of the gym where the fourth device is located, e.g. as shown in
According to some embodiments, a first device and a second device may be sending its data to more than one fourth device. For example if a single fourth device cannot cover the entire area of a gym, two or more fourth devices may be installed in the gym. In this case, the third device 402 may be configured to filter received data such that such duplicates will be removed. For example, if it receives data simultaneously from more than one fourth device, where more than one instance of data have the same user id or equipment id, the third device may use only one instance of data (of the more than one instance of data with the same user id or equipment id) when performing a correlation calculation and disregard the other instances.
According to some embodiments, the fourth device 502a-b may be any type of device which can receive data from the first/second device, e.g. equipped with a BLE/BT/Wi-Fi receiver and comprising a transmitter (e.g. WiFi) for retransmitting the data to the third device 412. The fourth device may for example be a laptop, or stationary computer. Other off the shelf-products such as an Intel Edison may be used, which according to one embodiment is connected to the first/second devices via Bluetooth (e.g. BLE) and connected to the third device 402 via Wi-Fi.
In order to reduce the risk of inadvertently logging a user id from one gym with an exercise equipment from another gym, the fourth device 502a-b may comprise an ID of a gym wherein the exercise equipment (i.e. the connected second devices) is located, wherein the fourth device is further arranged for transmitting the ID of the gym to the third device 402. This ID may then be used by the third device in a filtering step of the received data pertaining to an oscillating movement of the first devices/second device such that only data originating from the same gym may be correlated.
As mentioned above, an oscillating movement is a repeating movement or a periodic motion, back and forth over a range of positions, for example measured by an accelerometer. Such movements are plotted in the graph of
At the x-axis, the time points for the two extremes of displacement for each single oscillating movement, i.e. one time back and forth over a range of positions, are marked t1-t7. As visible on the graph, two of the oscillation movements 602, 604 share such time points, i.e. t1, t3, t5, t7, while the remaining oscillating movement 606 has other time points, i.e. t2, t4, t6.
According to some embodiments, the microcontrollers of the first 102 and second devices 112 are arranged for time-stamping at least one of the two extremes of displacement of the first device. Such time stamps may then be included in the data sent to the third device 402. According to some embodiments, the data pertaining to an oscillating movement of the first 102 and second devices 112 comprises the time stamp of the at least one of the two extremes of displacement. Such embodiment is shown in
In
Also in
In a similar way, data 724 is extracted from the measured movements (the movement 606 in
The third device (e.g. a server) 402 which is connected to a database 404 is thus arranged for receiving the data 704 pertaining to an oscillating movement of the first device, the user ID 702, the equipment ID 707, and the data 706 pertaining to an oscillating movement of the second device. Optionally, the third device 402 is further arranged for receiving data 708 pertaining to a current setting of the exercise equipment onto which the second device is attached.
The third device 402 may at any given moment receive data from a plurality of first and/or second devices. In
As understood by the person skilled in the art, the third device 402 may further receive data from more first/second devices, but this is excluded from
When receiving data from at least one first device, and at least one second device, the third device is arranged for calculating a correlation between the data pertaining to an oscillating movement of the first device and the data pertaining to an oscillating movement of the second device. The third device may be arranged for looking for e.g. the user ID 702 having a certain format to distinguish data 720 received from a first device from data 722, 724 received from a second device. Any other means for distinguishing data may be employed, such as setting a specific bit in the data as a one or a zero depending from which type of device (first or second) that it originates from.
When receiving data from more than one first and/or second devices, for example as shown in
In case a fourth device is included in the system for linking oscillating movements of an exercise equipment to a user of the exercise equipment in a database as shown in
For example, in the example of
Subsequent to the correlation calculation, any match (i.e. a correlation exceeding the threshold) between oscillating movements of a first device and a second device is linked and stored in the database. For example, using the received ID of the first device and the received equipment ID, the third device may increase a counter in a data entry which belongs to the user ID 702 and the exercise equipment having the equipment ID 707. Incrementing a counter means that repetition is counted. By including the current setting of the exercise equipment onto which the second device is attached, this can be included in the stored registry of the exercise performed by the user having the user ID 702 on the exercise equipment having the equipment ID 707, e.g. user X has performed Y repetition on machine Z with the weight N.
In the example of
The method comprises the steps of:
The devices (e.g. the first, second, third and/or fourth device) and methods disclosed hereinabove may be implemented as software, firmware, hardware or a combination thereof. In a hardware implementation, the division of tasks between functional units or components referred to in the above description does not necessarily correspond to the division into physical units; to the contrary, one physical component may have multiple functionalities, and one task may be carried out by several physical components in cooperation. Certain components or all components may be implemented as software executed by a digital signal processor, microprocessor or microcontroller, or be implemented as hardware or as an application-specific integrated circuit. Such software may be distributed on computer readable media, which may comprise computer storage media (or non-transitory media) and communication media (or transitory media). As is well known to a person skilled in the art, the term computer storage media includes both volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by a computer.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16152235.4 | Jan 2016 | EP | regional |
