Exertainer: An Interactive Entertainment System for Pervasive Running Applications

We developed Exertainer, a sensor-enabled, interactive running entertainment system to support advanced exercise applications. We developed a multiplayer racing game called Swan Boat on top of the Extertainer and conducted a user study. Introduction Recent progress in ubiquitous technology has brought new opportunities to redesign characteristics of exercises. There have been many academic efforts to make monotonous exercises like running more enjoyable, for example, by assisting runners based on real-time measurement of the runner’s physiological condition [6], or by giving incentives and feedback to motivate runners [1][2][3][5]. It has been shown that combining exercises with games not only make them more enjoyable but also enhance social bonding among players [4]. We envision that, in the future, diverse advanced exercise applications will emerge, featuring much richer interactivity and more immersive game play. We propose Exertainer, a sensor-enabled, interactive running entertainment system to support such applications. We expect Exertainer to be an effective replacement for traditional treadmill running. Although people can run in different environment, we target treadmill running since it is a common, convenient, Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). UbiComp 2009, Sep 30 – Oct 3, 2009, Orlando, FL, USA ACM XXX-X-XXXXX-XXX-X/XX/XX. *Miru Ahn CT DEPT., KAIST Kyungmin Cho CS DEPT., KAIST Sungwon Peter Choe CS DEPT., KAIST Sooho Cho CS DEPT., KAIST Inseok Hwang CS DEPT., KAIST Hyukjae Jang CS DEPT., KAIST Sungjun Kwon CS DEPT., KAIST Byunglim Park CT DEPT., KAIST Taiwoo Park CS DEPT., KAIST Jaesang Park R1Solution Co., Ltd.