Exercise devices – Having specific electrical feature – Monitors exercise parameter
Reexamination Certificate
2000-02-02
2002-09-10
Richmon, Glenn E. (Department: 3764)
Exercise devices
Having specific electrical feature
Monitors exercise parameter
C482S054000, C482S900000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06447424
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. The Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of electronic controllers for exercise equipment. More specifically, this invention relates to a method and system for selective adjustment of an exercise apparatus to simulate movement along a desired pathway.
2. The Relevant Technology
The desire to improve health and enhance cardiovascular efficiency has increased in recent years. This desire has been coupled with the desire to exercise in locations that are compatible with working out within a limited space such as within an individual's home or exercise gym. This trend has led to an increased desire for the production of exercise equipment. Furthermore, in modem urban society, it has become more and more difficult for the average individual to experience the exhilaration of exercising in nature. To compensate for this difficulty, athletic sports gyms and exercise facilities featuring treadmills, bicycles or exercise bicycles, weights, and stair stepper machines, have been developed in great abundance.
Climbing devices have also become very popular in recent years. Climbing requires a user to raise the user's knees in continual, strenuous strides. Climbing typically requires more exertion than mere walking on a flat surface. Consequently, the exercise of climbing can provide a more intense, challenging workout. Climbing exercise apparatuses typically feature an endless moving assembly, which is set on a significant angle and has a series of foot supports or steps. This configuration allows the exerciser to simulate the movements of climbing, walking, or running up a steep incline. Angled, moving staircase-type devices are typical examples of such climbing apparatuses.
Unfortunately, typical climbing devices within the art are tall and often require more ceiling height than is available in an exerciser's home. Thus, such climbing devices generally require a gym or warehouse, or at least a vaulted ceiling. Treadmill devices that fit into a user's home generally incline from a neutral position to an inclined position, then decline back to the neutral position. However, typical treadmill devices fail to adequately provide a user with the kind of terrain experience encountered when ambulating over rocky, rough, and natural terrain. For example, a hiker traversing a hiking trail typically exhibits greater lateral movement than most treadmill belts presently allow. Furthermore, beginning at around a 15% grade, a hiker exercising on a treadmill can start producing more energy than is necessary to drive the treadmill belt, such that a braking system is desirably employed. These structural, systematic requirements are presently not considered in the design of modem treadmills.
What is needed is a controller on an exercise apparatus that simulates the dynamics of natural terrain with its accompanying slopes and inclines and can fit into a user's home or another location with a limited ceiling height. Unfortunately, controllers presently associated with these exercise devices are only capable of creating an artificial time based environment. Generally, these exercise devices use an indicator to demonstrate the increase in workout difficulty as a treadmill increases its inclination or a stair stepper becomes more difficult to climb. These devices are exclusively time based, meaning that no matter how slowly an individual is walking, after a certain amount of time, an artificial hill displayed will pass. Unfortunately, time based regulation does not accurately simulate the environment that exists in a real hike or a real walk, depriving the individual of the substantial health benefits associated with a cardiovascular workout based substantially on a natural setting.
Exercise devices that utilize artificial mountain profiles typically create mountains of speed or of incline. Usually, these artificial profiles are time based workouts, where at a preprogrammed time in the workout, the exercise apparatus moves a little faster or increases the resistance, and then during the next workout segment the device alters its operating parameters again. Eventually, the device works its way up to a maximum speed, maximum incline, or maximum workout. Accordingly, the artificial profile adjusts the exercise apparatus so that the next segment becomes less difficult or more difficult by changing the resistance, inclination, or speed. As such, the typical exercise device goes through pre-set profiles. However, the artificial mountain or hill segments are simply time-based alterations of resistance, speed or inclination. Thus, typical workouts lack the natural diversity provided by a mountain trail.
The natural diversity provided by mountain trails yields additional incentives for a user to complete a workout. Representative exercise devices lack these incentives when their workouts are based purely on artificial workout profiles.
Finally, users of existing climbing exercise devices are increasingly faced with the difficulty of interpreting multiple monitoring panels with a single glance during the workout, resulting in sensory overload for the user. Most controllers contain separate indicators for distance traveled, vertical feet traversed, remaining workout length, and relative grade or incline adjustments to be made. It is difficult for a user to interpret and understand all of these gauges with one glance.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a method and system that electronically simulates a mountain hike.
It is another object of this invention to provide a method and system for converting a topographical map to an actual exercise workout for use with an exercise device that can vary between a variety of grades.
It is a further object of the invention to allow the user direct adjustment control of grade and speed, as well as tracking vertical feet hiked and the overall distance and speed.
It is a further object of the invention to provide exercise devices such as hiking apparatuses, climbers, treadmills, exercise bicycles, skiers, aerobic ellipticals, rowing devices, steppers and other devices that can simulate mountain trails, mountain streams, or rough terrain through an adjustment in resistance, incline, or speed.
It is another object of the invention to provide a controller which controls a workout that is both time and distance based, thereby allowing an individual to hike at their own pace and ensuring that they adequately follow a realistic mountain trail length.
It is another object of the invention to provide a single glance panel containing graphic representations so that the user is only minimally distracted from a workout.
It is another object of the invention to provide a carefully designed graphical representation panel allowing the user to obtain all of the important information with one glance.
These and other objects of the invention, as will be apparent herein, are accomplished by generating a mountain exercise profile having trail workout segments that are digitally coded to enable a selectively adjustable exercise device. A selectively adjustable exercise system comprises a virtual trail system for use on a selectively adjustable exercise apparatus.
Aside from being electrically coupled to the selectively adjustable exercise device and a display device, a controller of the virtual trail system operates according to software based workout profiles. The software interprets feedback from the exercise device and a user interface console to generate control signals for motors, electronic braking systems, and user monitors associated with the virtual trail system. The control signals for the exercise device components and display device panels are compiled into workout profiles for use by the controller. Other features of the exercise system include the incorporation of direct adjustment keypads on the user interface console for grade and speed settings. These keypads are primarily used when the system is not recalling a preprogrammed workout routine or hiking trail and is under man
Ashby Darren C.
Lorrigan Kirk
Watterson Scott R.
Richmon Glenn E.
Workman Nydegger and Seeley
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