When you are looking for a treadmill for your home, you want to get one that is going to work well for you. Yes this treadmill is expensive, but that expensive cost is more than made up for by the warranty that simply cannot be beat. When people complain about the treadmill being boring, it is probably because they do the same workout over and over.exercise treadmillIt is perfectly designed for all kind of body weight and can sustain more heavy duty exercises without any problems. Each are twenty minutes long, include a warm up and cool down period, and are equally effective for runners or walkers.The second most important feature is the belt. treadmillToday, the fitness treadmill is an affordable piece of exercise equipment. Granted it doesn't exactly mimic an out door run but it works great when you just can't get out.Any of the above mentioned treadmills can make a great choice if you are serious about either walking or running your way to fitness. Sometimes it can be difficult for the consumer to know which treadmill is best. And since it's still selling really well, more and more companies have begun manufacturing them. Your size and weight matter when choosing treadmill exercise equipment.
It's a problem that has long annoyed virtual reality researchers: VR systems can create a good experience when users are observing or manipulating the virtual world (think Michael Douglas in "Disclosure") but walking is another story. Take a stroll in a virtual space and you might end up with your face against a real-world wall.
The same problem is becoming apparent in teleoperated robots. Imagine you were teleoperating a humanoid robot by wearing a sensor suit that captures all your body movements. You want to make the robot walk across a room at the remote location -- but the room you're in is much smaller. Hmm.
Researches have built a variety of contraptions to deal with the problem. Like a huge hamster ball for people, for example.
Or a giant treadmill. The CyberWalk platform is a large-size 2D omni-directional platform that allows unconstrained locomotion, adjusting its speed and direction to keep the user always close to the center. With a side of 5 meters, it's the largest VR platform in the world.
It consists of an array of synchronous linear belts. The array moves as a whole in one direction while each belt can also move in a perpendicular direction. Diagonal movement is possible by combining the two linear motions.
Built by a consortium of German, Italian, and Swiss labs, the machine currently resides at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, in Tubingen, Germany, where it's been in operation for over two years.
Last year at IROS, Alessandro De Luca and Raffaella Mattone from the Universita di Roma "La Sapienza," in Rome, Italy, and Paolo Robuffo Giordano and Heinrich H. Bulthoff from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics presented details of the machine's control system.
According to the researchers, previous work on similar platforms paid little attention to control algorithms, relying on simple PID and heuristic controllers.
The Italian and German researchers came up with a kinematic model for the machine and from there they devised a control strategy. Basically the challenge is that the control system needs to adapt to changes in the user's direction and speed -- variables that it can't measure directly, so it needs to estimate them.
By precisely monitoring the position of the user on the platform using a Vicon motion-capture system, the controller computes estimates for the two variables and tries to adjust the speeds of the linear belts to keep the user close to the center -- all without abrupt accelerations.
The researchers also devised a way of using a frame of reference for the controller that varies with the user's direction. This method allowed the CyberWalk platform to provide a more natural walking experience, without making the user's legs cross when changing direction. The video above shows the results.
The CyberWalk platform is one of two locomotion devices developed as part of the European Union-funded Project CyberWalk. The other is a small-scale ball-array platform dubbed CyberCarpet.
The Technical University of Munich, another partner in the CyberWalker consortium, designed and built both platforms. And ETH Zurich, another partner, was responsible for the VR part -- creating a 3D VR model of ancient Pompeii and implementing the motion synchronization on the head-mounted display of the human walker.
You can read the researcher's paper, "Control Design and Experimental Evaluation of the 2D CyberWalk Platform," here.
Photo: CyberWalk Project
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Treadmills are good for exercise, but being able to just walk in one direction in the same environment gets boring really fast. Now a bunch of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany have come up with the Cyberwalk platform, which is an omni-directional treadmill that allows you to walk through virtual worlds without having to worry about spacial limits. Maybe they’ll be able to generate some cool Warcraft scenes for us to take a walk in, eh? Video after the jump.
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Are you determined to stay with your weight loss program, but you need to travel a lot? You will be able to run indoors which is very safe rather you are at a gym or at home. That treadmill we're talking about is the Sole F80 motorized treadmill.If you're not a new comer to the treadmill arena, then you'll love the more advanced features found on this machine. With a sturdy constructed frame, and full options you're going to love how great and easy to use this machine really is. foldable treadmillThe company is offering life time warranty on everything except labor. It will serve you just as well and cost you thousands less.First of all, the frame of a commercial treadmill is made of a high alloy steel or aluminum, and is welded, as opposed to put together with nuts and bolts, like consumer grade equipment. This treadmill is also used in schools, heavy traffic gyms, hospitals and health clubs as this can cater all fitness levels and ages.
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