Fitbird: Improving Free-Weight Training Experience Using Wearable Sensors For Game Control

Strength training improves overall health, well-being, and sports performance. However, the training process is often repetitive, making the experiences boring and tiring after going through the long-term session. This paper proposes FitBird, which uses wearable sensors to map existing strength training motion to game designs to enhance entertainment level during exercising. We chose 1:1:1 as the time intervals proportion of three distinct phases during exercises repetition: 1) Eccentric: muscle lengthening, 2) Isometric: same muscle length, and 3) Concentric: muscle shortening, and integrated this tempo for the well-known game - FlappyBird as the training guidance. We evaluated the proof-of-concept prototype with 12-person study that participants conducted strength training while using our system. The results showed that FitBird significantly improve user's entertainment level during strength training and was preferred by most of the users.