In May 2021, the LEAPX team received an invitation from a game company to participate in the definition, design and development of an intelligent spinning bike.

Design Goal: Stimulate People's Fitness Desire and Give Scientific Guidance

Affected by the outbreak, the demand for fitness at home has increased rapidly. Many people have the willingness to exercise, but lack the motivation to exercise and professional guidance. Most of the structures of fitness bicycles on the market are only composed of frames and screens, and the interaction between users and the digital content (recording class) of fitness is relatively single. If fitness is combined with games, it will not only enhance people's desire for sports, but also make fitness more scientific and effective through the design of games.

How to create a rich interaction and reward mechanism, optimize the fitness experience to be smoother and more complete, and make users like sports is the biggest challenge in defining the functions of this product.

The modeling of the existing fitness equipment/equipment always gives life a hard and cold feeling, which is not suitable for placing in the general home environment. Most of the modeling styles are too tough and have limited attraction to female users. For a fitness device to be placed in your own home, a simple and elegant appearance will become an important factor for people to consider whether to buy.

Breaking the inherent impression of traditional fitness equipment and showing the sense of movement and intelligence while being concise and elegant is the challenge of designing the appearance of this product.



How to stimulate motivation and scientific guidance?

If the game console is simply added to the bicycle, the game cannot be organically combined with fitness, which will give people a sense of separation. In the early stage of the design, we did a lot of brainstorming on how to combine games and hardware to make the whole experience more complete and interesting.

We hope that the hardware can be truly intelligent, can fully detect the user's motion state, and at the same time give users more interactive feedback at the physical level, so as to enhance the reality and immersion of motion/game, thus improving the motion effect and time.

The acceleration props in the game correspond to the LED lights on the bicycle, which trigger the light effect during acceleration and enhance the sense of speed in the real world.
• Synchronize the motion data of the mobile phone terminal to the car body, and the LED light can remind the user of the motion goals and achievements of the day.
Use the acceleration belt in the game to start the fan and reward the user for accelerating the ride by blowing.
With the addition of a contact sensor in the part of the car, the user can swing the limbs into a specified posture to guide the user to stretch correctly.
Pressure sensors are added to the seat and handle to encourage users to ride standing and trigger the animation effect of standing riding.



Exploration of Hardware Functions

We have done detailed research on fans and tested the riding experience of fans in different positions/types:

Adding dead fly and live fly conversion mechanisms to the transmission module of the bicycle can correspond to some speed control games and racing games respectively.



Architecture and Appearance Exploration

Size study: The floor space is a key factor for some small apartment buyers. We found that the flywheel placed in the front can use the space under the screen and handle. When the flywheel is behind, because it needs to avoid the pillar under the seat cushion, the position is more backward, which increases the overall length and footprint of the product.

In order to jump out of the inherent architecture on the market, we use sketch deliberation and AI parameterized simulation generation to select the architecture with appropriate proportions and reasonable functions from hundreds of bicycle architectures and then explore and optimize it with sketches.

In this process, we have summarized two guiding principles for appearance design:

1. Keep the bicycle as dynamic as possible
2. Hide the support structure on both sides of the flywheel and emphasize the large circular geometry of the flywheel.

The graphic element of circle is emphasized, which makes the overall posture have the dynamic feeling of bicycle, and makes the whole car simple and generous. Combined with the overall concise and modern design language, it breaks the inherent traditional equipment image of dynamic bicycle and transforms it into a modern intelligent product.

In order to provide riders with a good sense of resistance, the flywheel is often heavier. When riding at high speeds, the flywheel rotates quickly and has a large inertia, which is the biggest safety hazard. We use a circular mask to wrap the entire flywheel and related structures to increase the safety factor of use and prevent objects or body parts from entering the flywheel. At the same time, the support column and the conversion mechanism of dead fly and live fly are hidden inside to protect the mechanical structure.

Handlebar/handle exploration

When users use a spinning bicycle, the handlebar not only needs to provide the support of the user's arm and body during riding, but also needs to provide steering and a variety of game key interactions, which is the most complex part of product interaction.

We have put forward three different ideas, hoping to maximize the possibility of hardware.



Programme a

The traditional gamepad has a large number of keys, which is designed for users to sit on the sofa and focus on playing games. It is inappropriate to copy the traditional game console design directly to the handlebar of the fitness bicycle, which will not only distract the user too much attention, but also affect the user's riding posture and stability. Therefore, we simplified the, B keys and direction keys to paddle keys that are more ergonomic and have been verified by a large number of bicycle equipment. The number of keys is simplified to four. By arranging and combining, even four keys can satisfy various operations in the game.

Programme B

Inspired by Nintendo Switch, if the bicycle handle can be disassembled and transformed into other fitness equipment, more fitness/game modes can be expanded to train the whole body more comprehensively. The handle can increase counting, force measurement and other small sensors for fitness. On the one hand, it can record the comprehensive training data of the whole body, and on the other hand, it can better cooperate with the game to increase the user's immersion.

Programme c

The development of the game requires a lot of manpower and time. If the fitness bicycle can be well compatible with the existing console game, it can save a lot of game research and development costs, and it can also attract existing players on other game platforms. Therefore, we also tried to bring more traditional gamepad buttons into the handlebars.

After the customer has selected the handle scheme C, we enter the refinement phase and begin to make more specific optimization for each part.

Bicycle riding requires the hand to support part of the body's gravity. During some severe acceleration, the hand even plays a role in balancing the body's left and right swing. Therefore, it is a great challenge to meet the requirements of riding force, and at the same time, it is a great challenge for fingers to control the keys and steering handlebars at will.

By collecting human body data and physical testing, we found out the holding posture and handle position suitable for controlling the game keys.

According to the different states of fitness and games, we analyze three more reasonable holding postures.

The first is to relax the posture. In the sprint gap or the sightseeing mode in the game, the user can temporarily rest his hands in the horizontal area. At this time, the contact area between the hand and the handlebar is the largest, and the fingers can turn without force. The sitting posture is relatively straight, and the center of gravity is backward, which can free one of the hands to do fine operations on the touchpad in the center.

The second posture is the control posture when playing games. In this posture, gravity can be fully distributed to the root and palm of the thumb, and the thumb and forefinger can operate the keys relatively flexibly.

The third posture is the holding posture of standing and riding. In some sprinting or scenes that need to climb hills in the game, the user needs to call the whole body strength to ride, and the end of the handle can allow the cyclist to fully hold without worrying about touching the button.

The shape of the cross section is especially important for the second holding posture. On the one hand, the pressure of the palm should be distributed as evenly as possible. On the other hand, enough space should be created for the index finger and thumb to control the keys. We finally determine a cross-sectional shape with a relatively flat top and a relatively round bottom (B) through acceptance analysis and a large number of physical proofing.

In the second section, the handle needs to be raised to cater to the angle formed by the arm extending forward. Through a large number of physical proofing and ergonomic data, we tested that the experience of rising 6 degrees is the most natural.

In order to make the riding experience more real, we consider adding a six-dimensional force sensor to the handle to better simulate the sense of force when riding standing.

The fan module is combined with the screen to make the shape of the vehicle cleaner. This position can not only take care of the height of different users, but also make the wind feel clearer near the hand, making the cyclist seem to be outside. A large-size and high-quality audio module is integrated at the back of the screen, which brings a better audio-visual experience to the user's fitness process.

The cup holders placed on both sides of the handle can not only facilitate users to reach the kettle to replenish water immediately, but also avoid the legs of users riding.

The translucent track shell protects the safety of users while preventing dust from falling. The translucent visual effect can not only increase the level of vision, but also show the dynamics of wheel rotation and increase the visual interest.

A pressure sensor is embedded in the seat to sense whether the user is riding in a standing position. There is a corresponding reward mechanism in the game to encourage users to use their whole body strength.

At the later stage of the project, we entered the stage of engineering machine proofing. At this stage, we deeply participated in the structural design of the product, put forward many design concepts of structural details, and made model changes according to the engineering requirements, checked the hand board, CMF refinement, etc.

At present, the design verification model and design sketches of fitness bicycles and many other projects are on public display for the first time in LEAPX's offline exhibition "Behind Design". Welcome to visit the offline exhibition and have a deeper understanding of the project process.

Design team: Barney Mason | Deng Yumian | Wei Feng | Ding Chenyu | Siyoon Kim | Cai Chengqi | Huang Guoming