Idea

Form correcting gym mirror

Image credit: https://i1.wp.com/throomers.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/mirror-home-gym-interactive1.png?fit=974%2C645&ssl=1

Spook Louw Aug 03, 2021

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One of the advantages of having a gym partner is that he/she can help you check your form while working out to minimize the risk of injury and maximize the effectiveness of the exercise. 

Many people choose or are forced to train alone though, so they have to rely on mirrors to check their own form. This is not always possible though as some exercises might require you to be turned away from the mirror and even if you can see the mirror, it's easy to miss bad posture while training. 

The idea is to create a smart mirror that can check on your form for you, warn you when you are doing a movement incorrectly and even potentially tape your workout for revision later. 

I found a paper that has suggested developing a similar product but it never went past the planning stage. Smart mirrors like Care OS Poseidon Mirror exist already with other features like games, magnifying, facial recognition and virtual try on for clothes but nothing has been created for the fitness industry yet.

Tru Posture's Smart Shirt also has the technology to monitor your posture, but focuses only on your spine and shoulders and needs to be accessed via their app.

The idea is to have a mirror that knows movements, so that it can check if you are performing the exercises correctly. By configuring the mirror to yourself, it should be able to compare your movements to a database of good, clean performances and notify you of any deviations. If it is able to do this, it would be able to count your reps as an added feature as well.

Mirror Home Gym is simply a large screen that displays workouts for you to follow and it does not track your movement at all. Tempo seems to be the only product that checks your posture by using infrared scans, but it also does not act as a mirror. My idea resembles a normal mirror much closer than a television screen and would be simpler to program.

posture gym health

Creative contributions

Why Tempo is maybe one step ahead

jnikola Aug 03, 2021

A few years ago, I talked to my friend who was a junior programmer at that time. He was working on an app similar to Tempo and we had an interesting discussion.
 As a karate trainer, I was defending the argument that human trainers can catch posture and workout problems much better than AI. The reason was the fact that we "track" an individual before the training, during the training (while performing various exercises), and often outside of the gym. We see how a person walks, runs, lifts, crouches, jumps and we can relate it with the exercise performance much better. Also, the posture depends on the type of shoes the individual wears, the type of the clothes (tight clothes allow you to see every detail and that's not always the case), etc. 
He was trying to make the algorithm better than that. In the end, he agreed that he would be happy if they developed an AI that can be almost as good as the real trainer because the key advantage is the "mobility" of the AI trainer. You can carry your "trainer" in your pocket and work out on the street, in the park, at home, or in the garage. I found several similar apps that do the same thing: Onyx, VAY, infiGro and others. 

That's why I think smart AI mirrors are one step behind these apps. They are bulky, non-transportable, and require an integrated computer with sensors. All of these raise the costs of production while limiting the key benefit mentioned by my friend. 

Still the main advantage of the mirror persists - the self reflection. People love to look at themselves in the mirror. The question is if that's enough for people to buy it.

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Povilas S3 years ago

Juran but the mirror also adds the human trainer/observer quality that the AI lacks - even though you observe yourself, you can see more details because of the possibility to see a real-life reflection, and even though you are not a professional trainer you are a human and therefore able to catch the whole rather than focusing only on a particular aspect (which AI is good for). Of course, the mirror would be fixed, so you wouldn't be able to see yourself while walking, etc., but you'd check your reflection there while not exercising as well, so get the sense of your general posture from time to time. So having a mirror-app kind of combines the two (human and AI) qualities. 

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jnikola2 years ago

Povilas S Spook Louw I recently found another cool device for the same purpose in the shape of a small dime-sized wristband camera. It is able to determine the "rough" position of the body by just viewing a small part of the body and approximating the rest. Check it out. Maybe a combination of all of these approaches (mirror, app and a wristband camera) could result in astonishingly precise results!

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Smart glasses instead of mirrors

Samuel Bello Sep 08, 2021

I believe what is described as a smart mirror is actually a video recorder that displays the user's recording on a screen just like a mirror would. That way any posture correction or instruction can be displayed on the screen too. I think the idea will be improved if the output is shown to the user through smart glasses instead of a stationary mirror. That way the mobility problem is solved and the user can always see themselves from different angles without having to look at a particular place. 

Such a system will be easy to use outdoors too, cameras just have to be made available. An ideal way to implement this for multiple users is to use a camera display system where the cameras provide feeds of the users to themselves from relevant cameras as long as they are wearing their smart glasses in the gym. 

The video feeds can be saved temporarily to be analyzed later by a human trainer or AI so it does not matter which is better at what. (I noticed that this came up in the comments)

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Rep counter

Spook Louw Jun 09, 2022

A feature that should be easy to add to such a product is the ability to count reps. As it is already tracking the movement of the user's body, it should be able to keep track of the number of repetitions done of a certain exercise. 