Reference Information:
Title: Jogging over a Distance between Europe and Australia
Authors: Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller, Frank Vetere, Martin R. Gibbs, Darren Edge, Stefan Agamanolis, Jennifer G. Sheridan.
Venue: UIST’10, October 3–6, 2010, New York, New York, USA.
Summary: Jogging is not the most engaging form of exercise. It involves a repetitive action, continued for extended periods of time, with few forms of motivation. Some athletes are able to keep themselves going by listening to particularly energetic music, or jogging in an interesting area, but in general, the best way to stay motivated is to jog with a partner. By jogging together, athletes are able to keep themselves going far past the point where they would normally call it quits.
However, what if two athletes are separated by hundreds of miles? Say... the distance between Europe and Austrialia, to take the title's suggestion. Well, that's where the Jogging Over A Distance system comes into play. Using a headset, heart rate monitor, and mobile phone, the system allows athletes to virtually job together, keeping each other motivated.
Using psychoacoustics, the system positions the remote jogger's voice in the headset according to their hate rate, in comparison to the local jogger's. If the remote jogger's is out performing the local jogger, by performing higher than their target heart rate in relation to the local runner, then their voice will sound as if they are "in front" of the local jogger. If the remote jogger has a heart rate lower than the local jogger, the voice will appear behind them, and finally, if the two are synched up, then the voices will sound as if they're side by side.
This system allows for joggers to have a social experience as if the were jogging together, despite the distance between them. The system represents an improvement over a normal cell phone conversation, because the voice placement system allows for the two joggers to remain competitive throughout their run.
Discussion: With a title like Jogging over a Distance between Europe and Australia, one might assume that this paper is about some sort of bionic supermen, able to run impossible distances. However, this article is a bit more mundane, but none the less interesting. I found this system to be a great application of currently available technology. Several of these papers have been about the future of technologies which most likely will not exist anyways, so it was refreshing to see something which could be made into a product today.
The one question I have is how they deal with noise cancellation. Being outdoors, the wind noise is generally an issue when it comes to cell phone conversations. Also, since these users of the system are jogging, they'd most likely be breathing heavily, which could become irritating if it were constantly piped into the remote runner's headset.
I don't think they worry too much about noise cancellation because they only considered "social joggers". Usually people that socially jog don't huff and puff too much because they want to be able to talk.
ReplyDeleteI think something like this would be more useful with competitive runners or something like that. I could totally see an iPhone app using GPS w/ a leaderboard system. You could challenge someone to "running a mile" and the GPS would track and declare a winner. Better hope no one gets in a car and cheats though :/
I think this is a very interesting idea that could prove to be a useful tool. It promotes exercise, socializing, and competition by building on current jogging practices, so I could see it actually being used.
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