Design and implementation of the personalized virtual fitness system. (English)

Objective Traditional virtual fitness systems employ mouse-or keyboard-based interaction operations and simple message delivery mechanisms. Most traditional fitness systems not only have problems in the user immersion and playability, but also lack scientific guidance of fitness strategies. In this paper, a personalized virtual fitness system design is presented based on natural interaction, highly personalized contents, and user-central feedback regulation model, which can improve the entertainment value of the fitness system and the effectiveness and scientificalness of fitness exercise. Method The fitness system design in this paper contains three fundamental elements, namely, semantic-based natural interface, highly personalized strategy, and user-central feedback regulation. The interface takes advantage of Kinect interaction equipment to strengthen the connection between a user and a computer with gesture semantics. The interface does not require any input of mouse or keyboard. Deeply customized strategy adequately considers the need of users and gives them personalization configurations with an interactive tool. Game rules and scene presentations can be freely changed by users. Feedback regulation uses a loop control among physiological signals, game show, and exercise strategy. The system monitors user condition and subtly visualizes it into the game show to gain a beautiful scene that users want. Therefore, users positively change exercise strategy. On the basis of system design, we further implement a virtual bicycle fitness system, which uses a fitness bicycle, a Kinect, a heart rate sensor, and a personal computer. This system collects wheel turning of bicycle, gesture information, and user heart rate in real time, and these signals are mapped into virtual 3D scene. The system generates a feedback regulation model among system scene, user heart rate, and exercise strategy, and a scientific fitness guidance is provided in real time. Then, users can adjust exercise strategy on their own, and the system scene can be personalized with gesture-based interactions without mouse and keyboard. Result Experimental results show that most volunteers are interested in the system, and the proposed design of virtual fitness system can improve the entertainment value of the fitness system and the effectiveness of fitness exercise for users. Conclusion In this paper, a personalized 3D virtual fitness system design is presented based on natural interface, highly personalized strategy, and feedback regulation. Implementation of the system and results show that this system design has good effect on the entertainment value of fitness system and improves the effectiveness and scientificalness of fitness exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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