MIT students make computer 'biking' a fun exercise
The hot-air balloon was too low, much too low. A mountain loomed ahead, its granite wall reaching out to smash the fragile basket. Daniele De Francesco had only seconds to react. So De Francesco did the only thing he could do. He pedaled faster.
It worked. On the TV screen in front of him, the balloon slowly rose, clearing the peak with room to spare. De Francesco even got a couple of bonuses. He snared a floating gold coin worth 50 points, as well as a vigorous cardiovascular workout.
As a 2000 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, De Francesco still has use of the school's Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center. That's why he's one of the test subjects for an MIT project that merges video gaming with physical fitness.
It's called CycleScore, and it's a recumbent bicycle connected to a personal computer programmed with a simple, engaging game. CycleScore transforms the bike's pedals and handlebars into game controllers, and offers a game program that rewards steady effort and the occasional burst of speed. There's even a touch of the shoot-'em-up, as the balloonist can fire missiles at passing targets for extra points. The idea is to create a system so interesting and enjoyable that people will forget they're sweating.
For De Francesco, it almost works. "It gives me something to think about," he said. "Working out staring at the wall is the boringest thing." But the only game currently running on CycleScore -- steering a hot-air balloon over mountains -- might get a little old after a while.
The MIT students working on CycleScore certainly agree. They're techies as well as gamers, and hope to eventually offer a suite of slam-bam action games that'll turn members of the PlayStation generation into workout junkies.
CycleScore was dreamed up by Doron Harlev, Joseph Heitzeberg, and Harris Rabin, all MBA students at MIT's Sloan School of Management. The three students were looking for a practical and potentially profitable solution to one of the toughest problems in the physical fitness business.
Like it or not, fitness hurts. It's not a matter of intense agony -- just hours of stressful, tedious effort. Whether it's jogging, weightlifting, or cycling, exercise means spending a lot of time doing something most of us would rather avoid. This is one reason two-thirds of Americans are overweight.
But exercise isn't nearly as unpleasant if you do it without thinking about it. "Isn't it funny that aerobic exercise on a machine is incredibly boring," said Heitzeberg, "yet you can play basketball for 45 minutes, and it's fun? . . . It's about the brain, not the body." That insight inspired Harlev, Heitzeberg, and Rabin to look for ways to transform an aerobic machine into a new kind of game.
Armed with a $30,000 grant from Microsoft Corp. and a bike donated by fitness equipment company Precor Inc., the MBA students went to work. They recruited undergraduate computer science student Daniel Swanton to write most of the gaming software. "Exercise and computer games have been two of the biggest interests in my life," said Swanton, who took up exercise after his weight hit 205 pounds. "That was after three years of playing nothing but computer games," he said.
Swanton kicked the habit and is now down to 170, but he's never lost his fondness for the games, and wanted to help create a way to combine his passions.
To be sure, attaching a computer game to an exercise machine is far from a new idea. A company called Life Fitness tried hooking up a Nintendo game console to an exercise bike in the early 1990s, without much success. Last September, a Japanese company called Cateye began offering a $349 stationary bike that acts as a game controller. The user plugs in his own Sony PlayStation or PlayStation 2, and uses the bike to control a variety of standard PlayStation racing games.
But existing games aren't designed to coax out maximum athletic effort, or to let players slow down for a minute to get their wind back. Also, many standard games are far too complicated to be played by riding a bike. What they wanted was something simple enough for a first-time user, but interesting enough to keep them coming back.
The team sought advice from Dan Ariely, a professor at Sloan and MIT's famed Media Lab. "We designed a set of experiments in which we could test different aspects of ideas about motivation," said Ariely. For instance, they found that people do more exercise if they count time backward instead of forward. So the timer on CycleScore starts at 15 minutes and runs backward.
They also did experiments on pain perception, which showed that people will put up with considerable discomfort if the pain decreases over time. If it hardly hurts at all in the end, "it doesn't really matter what happens in the beginning," Ariely said. So the CycleScore is programmed to make pedaling the bike much easier in the last minute or so.
The first CycleScore was installed at the Zesiger gym last week. Each user is asked to fill out an electronic survey that'll be used to make further improvements. The original team of Harlev, Heitzeberg, and Rabin are about to graduate. Control of the project is moving to a new group led by David Edery, a first-year MBA student at Sloan.
Edery is also a cofounder of MIT Game Tycoons, a group of about 120 MIT students interested in working in the computer games business. So it's no surprise that he's eager to exploit the commercial possibilities of CycleScore. For instance, they might produce a version that could be plugged in to existing home exercise gear. "Anyone who can afford one of these bikes could probably afford another $500 for a stripped-down machine (computer) that can play some of these games," Edery said.
Edery knows that players will want a lot more than hot-air balloon racing to keep them interested. So he plans to develop more exciting contests, featuring fighter planes or spaceships. And the team also plans a version that'll let workout buffs link their bikes over the Internet and compete against each other.
Such games are notoriously addictive -- just look at the millions worldwide who play online games like Counter-Strike. Now imagine an equally addictive game, which makes the players fitter and healthier after every contest.
If CycleScore catches on, these folks will be able to kick butt in the real world, not just online.
