:: Research Group Embedded Interaction :: Media Informatics :: Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
UbiFitness - Therapy Top, Tilt Board and Shift Board
Designing Ubiquitous Computing Applications in the field of sport
Creating ubiquitous computing systems that are usable outside the lab is a hard challenge. We report on ongoing work where sensor technology and wireless networks are integrated with sports equipment to improve the utility and usability of such equipment. Our focus is on the iterative design process for a multi-disciplinary team. We show how mutual learning became a central issue for the success of the design and development.
The Therapy Top allowed us to re-use parts and components of a project done in early 2005, the SensorVirrig project.
Two Therapy Tops: Round plates reside on a half sphere, enabling tilting and circling in any direction.
The Shift Board enables shifting to the left and right and to raise the board higher from the floor during the exercise.
The Tilt Board is a plate on two half round boards, enabling the trainee to tilt forward and backward or to tilt to the left and right.
Many systems in ubiquitous and pervasive computing are still technology driven and therefore their applications and scenarios are often questionable. This is in general the result of not involving the real user during the design and development process. In this paper we present a user-centered, iterative design process for a ubiquitous computing project in the field of sports. Involving a multi-disciplinary group of people, especially physiotherapists, sport coaches and computer scientists is essential for a successful design. The goal of our research is to develop, build, deploy and study a set of augmented pieces of sports equipment that provide an added value to users and trainers compared to the non-electronic versions of the sports equipment.
It is for our approach a basic principle that during the whole processes the interests of the stakeholders (physiotherapists and coaches on one hand, and patients and trainees on the other hand) drive the development. It is the objective to build a system suited and customized to their respective needs based on latest technology available. The advances with regard to the technology are rather a side issue, as the technology used is considered as vehicle to achieve the goal of the project.
The complete system has been fully developed and deployed. It has been evaluated and tested in a real-world setting with more than 100 participants doing their regular training with the computer-augmented sports equipment developed in this project.
Architecture:
The architecture of the therapy top system is depicted in the following figure.
Profile Editor:
A comfortable java-based profile editor allows exercise definition, user-exercise association and exercise parameter input.
Training Setup:
The setup for the user study and for the long term study of the system in a sports school and a physiotherapist practice is depicted below. The screen is adjustable in height and tilt.
Left Image: The chair can be swung in for patients recovering from an operation and who cannot stand on a therapy top. All other users can exercise with one or two therapy tops within the steel frame. The collateral round steel tubes provide safety in case of a stumbling or falling.
Right Image: For normal trainings, two therapy tops can be used at the same time, one for each foot. The training equipment is surrounded by the steel construction providing safety for the person doing the training.
Exerciser Program and Visualizer Program:
The next annotated screen shot shows the right/left tilt exercise visualization.
The next annotated screen shot shows the forward/backward tilt exercise visualization.
The next annotated screen shot shows the circling left exercise visualization.
After a completed training, the training data can be reviewed. Additional information on correctness and exercise time are given as feedback.
RFID cards used for authentication towards the therapy top system.
Exercises with the Therapy Top, the Tilt Board and the Shift Board
Please click on the exercise to view the video. The video coded used MSMPEG4. If you do not have the codec installed, please consider downloading the codec pack for Windows or downloading the single codec, for example here. You can view the videos then using the Windows Media Player or IrfanView.
The following list of exercise are of the difficulty level low:
- simple balancing (standing) on the Therapy Top
- standing on one leg on the Therapy Top
- preceding exercises with closed eyes
- knee-bends
- go from normal stand to tiptoe stand
- seesaw forth and back
- circling right and circling left
- tilting backward and forward
The following table only contains videos of the difficulty levels medium or high.
| Exercise | Exercise Description | Difficulty Level |
| Exercise 01 | Circling with one foot while tilting with the other. | medium |
| Exercise 02 | Tilting forward/backward with both feet placed behind each other | medium |
| Exercise 03 | Circling with one foot while tilting with the other. feet changed compared to exercise 01) | medium |
| Exercise 04 | Tilting left/right with both feet placed being each other | medium |
| Exercise 05 | Tilting left/right (contrariwise) with both feet placed being each other | high |
| Exercise 06 | Tilting with one foot, circling with the other with both feet placed behind each other | high |
| Exercise 07 | Tilting right/left (contrariwise) with both feet placed next to each other | medium |
| Exercise 08 | Tilting right/left with both feet placed next to each other | medium |
| Exercise 09 | Tilting forward/backward with one foot on one Therapy Top | high |
| Exercise 10 | Circling (contrariwise) with both feet placed next to each other | high |
| Exercise 11 | Tilting (contrariwise) with both feet placed next to each other | high |
| Exercise 12 | Tilting left/right with one foot on one Therapy Top | high |
| Exercise 13 | Circling with one foot on one Therapy Top | high |
Videos:
The following research video introducing the complete system and setup shows a pre-final system we used for evaluation. The final system setup is shown in the pictures above.
The video will be submitted to UbiComp 2006 as video submission.
The video coded used MSMPEG4. If you do not have the codec installed, please consider downloading the codec pack for Windows or downloading the single codec, for example here. You can view the videos then using the Windows Media Player or IrfanView.
TherapyTop -
Research Video, Research Group Embedded Interaction (MS MPEG 4, ca. 80 MB)
TherapyTop -
Research Video, Research Group Embedded Interaction (MPEG 2, ca. 80 MB)
Contact:
Matthias Kranz
Albrecht Schmidt
Paul Holleis