METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SELECTING A CONDITION OF A FITNESS MACHINE IN RELATION TO A USER

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/872,960, filed Dec. 5, 2006, and incorporates the same by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to a condition-selectable fitness machine, which as used herein includes all types of fitness or exercise or like machines having at least one selectable condition of use and, more particularly, relates to a method and apparatus for selecting at least one such condition in relation to a user.

Condition selectable fitness machines, e.g., treadmill and/or weight lifting fitness machines, have required that the users manually select the conditions, e.g., time, repetitions, speed and/or weight, that the machines will provide the users. Such machines are described in the following 156 U.S. patent Publications and first 100 of 234 U.S. patents that are incorporated herein by reference to describe the methods and apparatuses thereof, such incorporation being based on their designation by the Patent Office web site as claiming fitness or exercise machine control.

Selecting the condition of a machine with a card having punched holes or a magnetic stripe is too well known to require description. Newer RFID (radio frequency identification device) tags and transponders are also known. Disclosures of these are incorporated herein by reference to the first 100 of 3032 U.S. patent Publications and 813 U.S. patents, such incorporation being based on their designation by the Patent Office web site as claiming an rfid tag or transponder.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This invention changes this paradigm by introducing the concept of Smart Embedded Actuator System for RFID Enabled Fitness Machines. From a practical perspective, this means that a user will carry, e.g., wear, an interactive, e.g. punched, magnetic or RFID tag, which herein includes any such portable transponder, that will be detected by a reader on or at a condition selectable fitness machine. The detection of the tag will provide information relative to the user and/or a selectable condition of the machine.

If the detection of the tag provides selection of a condition of the machine, the machine is set for the condition relative to the user by the user's carrying the tag detected. In this case, the user may have to carry multiple tags to provide information relative to the user to select conditions of respective machines and/or to change the tag carried when the condition selected is to be changed.

If the detection of the tag provides information relative to the user, e.g. user identification, the reader is connected to a device, e.g., a PC running a software application that will associate the tag identification with its own database of condition selection for the identified user for correspondingly setting a respective fitness machine.

The condition of the machine set depends on the machine. For a treadmill, for example, the condition may be one or both of time or speed of operation. For a weight lifting machine, for example, an actuator will select a weight to lift. Therefore, still other selectable conditions of these and still other fitness machines are contemplated according to the conditions of such machines selectable relative to the user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

Preferred embodiments that illustrate but do not limit the invention will now be described relative to a drawing in which:

FIG. 1 is a pictorial elevation of a weight lifting fitness machine incorporating the invention; and

FIG. 2 is a schematic bottom plan view of a weight portion of the fitness machine of FIG. 1.

DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

The preferred embodiment shown in FIG. 1 is based on a commercial Iron Body cable-operated weight lifting machine 10. As well known in such machines, a cable arrangement pulls a bar (not shown) having holes (not shown) along its length. The bar extends through central holes (1 in FIG. 2) of a stack of plate weights (2 in FIG. 2) having transverse holes or bottom grooves (4 in FIG. 2) to the holes in the bar. Actuators 6 (one shown in FIG. 2) on each of the plate weights extend members when activated as shown for the one in FIG. 2 into one of the holes in the bar. Then, movement of the bar with the cable lifts all the plate weights above the plate weight with the activated actuator, whereby to select that weight condition for the machine 10.

To select the actuator to actuate, a user carries to the machine 10 a tag (not shown) indicating the actuator, thereby relating the user to the actuator that will select the condition of the machine relative to the user as described above. While the tag may be in other preferred embodiments (not shown) another machine readable device such as a punch or magnetic-swipe card, the tag for this preferred embodiment is a Radio Frequency Identification Device, RFID, which is known as described above to be a radio frequency transponder that responds without other input power to a radio frequency signal in this case from an RFID antenna 8 on or at the machine 10. A power supply 12 provides the radio frequency signal to the antenna 8, which receives the transponded signal from the tag to indicate an actuator. The transponded signal received by the antenna is provided to an RFID reader 14, which reads from the transponded signal identification of the actuator 2 and sends a signal to the actuator 2 to select it and, thereby, a weight relative to the tag carried by the user.

In another preferred embodiment, the tag carried by the user identifies the user, for example by a gym membership number or other code or name, and the RFID reader is a personal computer (PC) or PC-like device that looks up the so-identified user in a database that correlates the user to an actuator of the machine to select as above a weight relative to the user.

Thus, a whole system is composed of:

• • a) A weight lifting fitness machine (does not matter the brand, in this case IRON BODY brand);
  • b) An RFID reader and antenna (e.g., a Samsys);
  • c) A PC (e.g., running windows XP );
  • d) A VB6 software application;
  • e) An actuator (e.g., a solenoid brand Black Knight 123-420-620-620)
  • f) A DC power supply to energize the solenoid; and
  • g) Sensors (OPTIONAL, to count the number of exercise repetitions being performed).

Though the invention makes sense as a whole, considering all the components and their interaction to offer a SMART experience, the unique/innovative element is the embedded actuator in each of the machines's weight plates, controlled by the RFID reader.

Variations, permutations and combinations of the elements of the invention as will occur to those of ordinary skill in the art are contemplated as within the scope of the invention of the following claims.